MOTHER OF three Eleni Toubi was trying to make sense of what had happened, standing on shards of glass in the hallway of her home at Mari, the village nearest to the site of the huge explosion.
Windows and doors shattered, the roof of the house damaged.
“We were sleeping when we heard a huge explosion. I got out of bed immediately to check on the children,” she said.
No one was injured in her household but a relative nearby sustained head injuries and was rushed to hospital.
Her 12-year-old daughter hid under the covers after hearing the blast.
“I was scared,” Stella said.
The family was still trying come to terms with what happened as government officials arrived in the village to record the damages. Next door it was the same scene.
Residents sweeping shattered glass and trying to repair their aluminium doors and windows.
Just up the road, workers were cleaning up the damage to a prefabricated church whose walls were ripped by the blast and the roof had caved in.
Workers removed the icons and other valuable objects and took them for safekeeping elsewhere.
Up the road from the church an elderly woman says the family had a lucky escape.
They had left the bedroom window open, inadvertently letting the blast to come through without smashing the glass.
A green curtain that used to drape the window was now hanging from a mirror across the room.
“We barely escaped,” she said.
Further down, 90-year-old Myrofora Pieri was sitting by the entrance of her old house.
Its door was ripped off by the blast, a piece still hanging from the hinges.
“If I were there I would have been dead,” she said. “I heard a loud bang and the doors blasted open.”
Across the narrow village street, her neighbour Giorgos Petrakis, 66, said he thought it was an earthquake at first.
His initial shock however was replaced by anger at those who took the decision to store the munitions at the naval base.
“They should be executed. How can we trust them with our children?” he said of the armed forces.
Around 150 people in the village of Mari and the surrounding area have been left in need of shelter for the next few days at least, according to Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis.
“Our concern is to reassure and help people from this moment onwards,” Sylikiotis said
Community leader Nicos Asprou said they were arranging accommodation at hotels for those whose homes were seriously damaged.
The massive blast also caused damage to communities kilometres away.
Damage, mostly broken windows, were reported in Zygi, Kalavasos, Tochni and Psematismenos.
Some expressed indignation at what appears was gross negligence on the part of the authorities.
“They should resign, they killed all these people,” said Eleni – she only gave her first name – who works at a coffee shop at the entrance of Zygi.
“All they do is sit in their office and collect their cheques,” Eleni said.
Over the hill from Mari, observers got a full view of the damage to the Vassilikos power station, which by all accounts, was destroyed.
