OVER 900 properties were damaged in Monday’s tornadoes in Limassol, authorities said yesterday. Four hundred and twenty cars, a boat and several greenhouses were also wrecked.
On Tuesday, Interior Ministry clean up crews struggled to calculate the total damage caused by three tornadoes that ripped through Limassol’s town centre during rush hour on Monday morning.
By last night, civil defence and district officer engineers and technicians were expected to present the Ministry with a preliminary evaluation of the cost of damages to homes, so that a full report could be prepared for the Cabinet meeting today. By yesterday afternoon, the tally stood at 400 buildings damaged in the Polemedia district and a further 500 in central Limassol.
Today, Ministers plan to discuss compensation for families that lost their homes. Priority will be given to houses damaged in the centre of Limassol town, which was hardest hit, and to a Turkish Cypriot community, who were temporarily being housed in hotels or with relatives, said Interior Minister Andreas Panayiotou.
Officials are then expected to try and calculate the cost of damage to merchandise, which should be more complicated. This would include damage to Limassol’s new port, which saw metal transport containers torn off trucks and newly imported vehicles destroyed in the freak storm.
President Glafcos Clerides has already said the government will compensate victims from the state’s natural disaster budget, until the full cost of the damage can be calculated and approved by the House.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
