Bus pummelled, trees felled but no serious injuries in stormy day
SIX CHILDREN were taken to Larnaca hospital yesterday after a freak hailstorm blew out the windows of their school bus as torrential rainstorms and whirlwinds yesterday wrought havoc around the island. There were no serious injuries and the children were later released.
Police and fire service officials placed on high alert to cope with fallen power-lines and flooded areas.
Larnaca town and district sustained the brunt of the storm yesterday with police announcing that some lives were almost lost in the downpour.
Buildings and roads were flooded, drivers were stranded, trees and sign posts fell. A van was overturned in the thunderstorms which began in the early hours of yesterday morning and continued well into the midday.
Larnaca airport was also affected while power-cuts were also reported in and around Larnaca and in particular in the village of Oroklini.
Andreas Nicolaou of Fire Service Headquarters in Nicosia stated that a total of 120 emergency calls were made to the fire services around the island. He said 100 calls were from Larnaca, ten in Nicosia, six in the Famagusta district and four in Limassol.
Yesterday morning, three major electricity poles consisting of 135,000 volts and providing electricity to the Larnaca areas of Dhekelia, Ayios Georgios, Oroklini and Alambra fell to the ground from a whirlwind that tore through an area of the village.
Hailstorms pelted and damaged three primary school buses belonging to schools from the villages of Avgorou and Xylogafou and the American Academy in downtown Larnaca. Six pupils being rushed to Larnaca General Hospital where they were treated for minor injuries and shock.
Also in Larnaca, a combination of rain and hailstorms left drivers with almost zero visibility on most roads just after 6am. One fire station in Larnaca alone received 66 emergency calls from drivers trapped in flooded roads and civilians whose homes and offices were also inundated by the waters.
Larnaca Fire Chief Ezekiel Papadopoulos yesterday said that off-duty firemen were called in to help out with the increasing emergencies.
“There was good cooperation with the Larnaca Municipality, the civil defence and the police”, said Papadopoulos
“Thank God, we had no injuries and people’s lives were not put in any immediate danger.”
Police also reported that trees and advertising boards littered the streets of Larnaca from strong winds, boats were damaged from pounding into each other at the marina whilst a Cyprus Airways flight on route from Beirut was forced to land at Paphos Airport because of the bad weather conditions.
Power lines fall in Oroklini
THERE WAS also drama in the village of Oroklini were a mother and her six-year-old child witnesses power lines crash into her garden from a nearby electricity pole.
Her angry father, Stelios Frangeskou, yesterday blasted the authorities for keeping such dangerous power-lines so close to people’s homes
“As soon the cables came down, the whole house was totally surrounded by power-lines. My daughter was terrified and called me so we all came running to the house. We now hope that the relative authorities will move these electricity poles away because they have shown to be death-traps. They are too close to our homes and need to be moved.”
His comments were dismissed by an Electricity Authority (EAC) press officer Costas Gavrielides who told reporters that at no time was anybody in any danger.
“They are not death traps. As soon as the cables become disconnected from the poles, they are cut off from any electricity.”
Oroklini community leader Spyros Elenodorou said that despite the chaos, he was glad that no lives had been lost.
“The village was totally bombarded today. We had a whirlwind come out of the sea and take down the three electricity poles. All electricity went down and the only thing that we are thankful for is the fact that no lives were lost. The damage is huge and around ten days will be needed for all this carnage to be fixed.”
The same whirlwind that ripped through Oroklini also flung a doughnut van into the air, where it landed upside-down on the Larnaca–Dhekelia road.
Sign posts and trees also littered the road although no serious injuries were reported.
Speaking to state radio yesterday, Costas Panayi of Police Headquarters in Nicosia, said that it was the area of Larnaca that felt the full wrath of the storm.
“Most incidents took place in Larnaca with the excepting of a fishing boat sinking at the port of Latchi in the Paphos district. In Larnaca, work is underway to bring things back to normal. There were only a few reports of people being injured but none of the injuries were serious.”
Larnaca on low power
COMMENTING on power cuts in the Larnaca area, Gavrielides said the town will have to run on minimal electricity but that will not cause problems to the public unless another storm tears down the lines again.
“Right now, power has been restored to the residents. The biggest problems we are facing are with the felled lines and a few more days will be needed to fix them.
“That does not mean Larnaca will have no electricity – it will instead run on minimal power for the next few days. A couple of more weeks will be needed to replace the three electricity poles that went down but all areas will have power.”
The Head of the Cyprus Meteorological Services Kyriakos Theophilou said that temperatures should return to normal over the weekend adding that the downpour would have cleared the dust that swamped the air in recent days.
“Temperatures took a massive plunge today (yesterday) falling from 38C to 23C which will also explain the bad weather. This weekend, will see an improvement of weather conditions although we could some rainy spells.
“The temperature will rise however and return to normal which is around 28C for this time.”
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