EYEWITNESSES of the devastation caused by yesterday’s huge blast which ripped through the Evangelos Florakis naval base in the Limassol district could only speak of their terror and confusion as their homes, cars and lives were turned upside down.
“I was on the highway… there was a lot of fog and then it was like a bomb hit the car,” said a middle aged Limassol woman. “I stopped the car and got out. There was glass and debris everywhere. It was destroyed…. I don’t know what happened… I can’t explain it… there was debris in the air,” she said, waving her arms in the air.
The woman’s husband said he’d received a call from his wife just after the blast occurred.
“She called me and said they’d been wrecked and couldn’t say what had happened,” he said. “In 10 minutes I was on the scene. Everything was destroyed. I told my wife to calm down. There were a lot of metal circular things strewn about. I think they were armoury from the explosion at the naval base,” he added.
A shell shocked man in his early 30s tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke of his experience minutes after the early morning blast.
“There were three of us driving [on the highway] and there was a huge noise… I think the situation speaks for itself… there was a loud noise. We stopped and didn’t know what had happened,” he said, staring into space.
An EAC man who was 300 metres away from the blast and suffered head injuries said he was lucky to be alive because he had been shielded by a mountain blocking his direct view to the explosion site.
“There was nothing left. No cars, no boilers, no buildings, nothing,” he said. “Some of my colleagues were injured but thankfully there were not fatalities.”
A Vassiliko power plant employee said the sky lit up when the explosion went off.
“I hit my head and then we were shrouded in darkness. I looked for an exit to get out. All the roads were unsurpassable to the station but we made our way out to get help. Passersby took us to the hospital,” he said.
But it was not only people on site who heard the blast.
Alex Dimitriou, 30, said she suffered a huge shock when a shower of glass rained down on her bed while she slept.
“When you’re in a deep sleep and woken to that it’s a little crazy,” she told the Cyprus Mail.
Dimitriou, who had been staying at a small hotel near Governor’s Beach in the Limassol district, said the experience had been more than a little “scary” and that it had “all happened so quickly”.
“I thought it was bombs. Everyone else was saying it was an earthquake. Some old ladies thought it was the Turks and were calling for help. No one knew what it was. There was no power and the TV wasn’t working so we didn’t know what was going on,” she said.
As well as the hotel other nearby homes had suffered similar damage with windows smashed in and people in the streets looking dazed and confused, she said.
Residents of the nearby communities of Mari and Zigi were also affected.
Mari Community Council vice president Panayiotis Kyriakou said a lot of houses, doors, windows and roofs had been damaged as had a number of cars, but that no residents had been injured.
Zigi Community Council general secretary Takis Constantinou said his village had also suffered numerous material damages.
“At first we felt tremors and thought it was an earthquake and then there was the huge explosion,” he said.
Another man said he had and three others had been driving near Moni towards Pendakomo when “something like lightning struck”.
“The car windows smashed in but we stayed calm and pulled over,” he said. Thankfully he and his passengers suffered no injuries but his double cabin van was completely destroyed.
“You can’t imagine something like this. It just doesn’t cross your mind. There were plastic cylinders lying around and pieces of metal were falling in the road. Then it started raining dust and dirt like black gunpowder. I can’t describe it any other way,” he said.
The blast was even heard as far away as Sia village in the Nicosia district.
“I was awake at 5am,” said Andri Evripidou, 61. “I sleep with a fan on and then it suddenly stopped working and the house security alarm went off. That happens when we have a power cut. About seven or eight minutes later I heard this ‘bam’ and wondered what it was,” she said.
