PEOPLE IN the area surrounding the site of Monday’s devastating blast at Evangelos Florakis naval base in Limassol district were still in shock yesterday, only just beginning to make sense of what had happened to them.
Campers by Governor’s Beach described seeing a cloud of dust and heat coming towards them from the sea with the ground shaking while glass and furniture were flying in all directions.
“It was like stepping in an old oven fire when you just put in firewood,” Androulla Hajigeorgiou, 59, told the Cyprus Mail.
Androulla, wife of former fire Chief George Hadjigeorgiou, was in tears over the lost lives of the young firefighters.
They had all trained side by side with her son, a fire fighter with EMAK, the special emergency unit dealing with catastrophes.
Her son Alexis was meant to be working at the base on Monday morning but his shift was changed a few weeks after.
“I was so confused, I was thinking of my son and then those kids who died. My brother who’s in the fire brigade called me and gave me their names. I knew them all,” Androulla said.
“There is way to measure this [emotional] pain,” she said.
“What can you possibly tell the parents who lost their children?”
Another camper, 36-year-old Marinos Eleftheriou, was in his car driving just outside the base when he “saw a flash.”
Obviously still in shock, he described how his car was hit by flying debris while he was still inside it.
An ambulance took Eleftheriou to Larnaca General Hospital. While he was waiting, he started gathering clues about what happened by the fire fighters who rushed to the scene and were discussing the situation.
“I called the others at the camping site and told them to leave,” Eleftheriou said.
While some left the camping site, others chose to stay behind – largely because they were too confused to know what else to do.
“We didn’t know what was going on and no one came to explain anything to us. We kept hearing stories. Some were telling us to go, others to stay,” a camper said.
At Mari, the village closest to the blast, families and friends kept together seeking comfort in company, still unable to understand what happened, and getting increasingly angry.
“Just because [the Defence Minister] quit, so what? Those who put him there should have fired him long ago for being incompetent at his job,” Maria Neofytou said. “They had ammunition just lying there. Are we serious?”
Social services and local authorities visited the affected villages to offer support and assess damages but most villagers were seemed nonchalant.
Their thoughts were instead with their friends and family who lost someone or were hurt.
“It doesn’t matter about my shop but what about those who lost someone close to them?” Iliana Hadjcacou, the owner of the local market said.
