Greece: Storm floods dog home – “Moments that pierce your soul”

2023-09-09 01:58:03

Severe storms

Water floods dog home in Greece – “Need food”

08.09.2023, 21:24 | Reading time: 4 minutes

The rains in Greece also caused severe flooding in animal shelters.

Photo: Animals in Need Greece eV

Storms cause major damage in Greece. A home for street dogs has also been hit – animal rights activists are asking for donations.

Berlin. Severe storms are causing severe weather in Greece Despair. While people have lost everything in some places, rescuers continue to search for survivors in the floods. At least ten people have died so far, and the number of deaths is expected to rise once the water has receded.

The case of an animal shelter in Karditsa, in southwest Greece, also shows how dramatic the extent of the catastrophe is. German and Greek animal rights activists from the association rescue animals there “Animals in Need Greece” Together they bring dogs from the streets to Germany. But the home where the animals are waiting to be adopted was not spared from the floods of the last few days.

“Moments that pierce your soul”

In a post on Facebook describes it Association the location. The area is therefore completely under water and the animals often barely escaped with their lives. “Some dogs were able to escape through the open gates to higher streets or mountains, some swam in the water and could just be pulled out,” it says.

The animal rights activist Evi Thanou also reports on Facebook about how smaller dogs clung to larger ones to avoid drowning. “These are moments that pierce your soul as you see the pain in their eyes and hear their cries for help,” she writes. It took more than five hours to get the animals out. The helpers worked to the end of their strength.

Since the “Daniel” storm, 72,000 hectares in Greece have been under water. The images from the disaster area are shocking. Entire villages suddenly seem wiped out. The amount of rain storm surpass anything that Greek meteorologists had previously measured. In certain places, more than 700 liters of water per square meter fell in less than 24 hours.

The city of Volos was hit particularly hard. Tons of mud were washed into the streets in the port city with around 150,000 inhabitants. Within a very short time, the brown water in the city rose and swallowed entire cars, as videos show.

Dogs in Greece try to protect themselves from the rain floods.
Photo: Evi Thanou/Facebook

More on this: Why the storms in the Mediterranean are so bad right now

The storm in Greece hit the animal shelters so badly

Thessaly, where the club’s two animal shelters are located, was also hit hard. According to animal rights activists, extreme rainfall and the resulting enormous water masses of 174 tons per square meter caused the dams to break and the lake to overflow. “An absolute catastrophe“, they write. A lockdown has been imposed for the entire city. According to information from animal rights activists, dozens of people are still standing on the roofs of their houses in the midst of the floods. Karditsa and some villages in the area are also no longer accessible.

Still during the dramatic rainfalls On Thursday morning, the local team rushed to the various locations and took dogs into the car, brought puppies as well as old and sick dogs to nearby halls and opened all the animal shelter gates “with the last of their strength.”

Dogs waiting to be rescued.

The great chaos came afterwards: the electricity and cell phone networks collapsed, the city was completely flooded, bridges collapsed and streets were torn away. Until yesterday evening, the association’s German employees did not know whether their Greek colleagues were okay, whether the animal shelters were still standing and whether the animals had survived.

Also read: Greece: Current storms – dramatic forecast

Storms in Greece: These donations can be used to help the animals

So far they don’t have a precise overview of the entire extent. What they do know, however, is that food for the animals is urgently needed. Because all warehouse supplies were flooded.

They also expect that no shops will be able to open there in the next few weeks. That’s why you ask for the following Donate:

Dog foodDog kennelsWarm blanketDog crates

Monetary donations would also help, although this is not the first one at the moment Help can be sent because there are no options to purchase locally.