THERE is not enough evidence to prosecute the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) for the devastating forest fire that broke out in the Saittas mountains last year, destroying 10 square kilometres of forest, farmland and several homes.
The Republic’s Legal Services have decided that harmonised legislation regarding environmental responsibility cannot be applied to the Saittas fire, as the catastrophe had taken place before the law was implemented.
But the decision contradicts findings of an expert investigation into the cause of the fire, which appeared to find EAC cables at fault for the disaster.
The fire – which took firemen, civilian volunteers, three aircraft and five helicopters almost two days to extinguish, and near destroyed the Saittas, Amiandos and Pelendri communities in the Troodos region – took place in June 2007; the environmental responsibility law came into force when it was published in the Official Gazette, in December 2007.
The Services made the announcement in response to Green Party MP George Perdikis’ recent query over the reasons of the blaze.
The “Law for Environmental Responsibility – regarding the prevention and restoration of environmental damage” provides that all enterprises must take precautionary measures to protect the environment and in the event that the environment is damaged, must take on the responsibility of restoring the damages. Otherwise, the penalties are especially steep – to the extent that the law recommends enterprises be insured.
The Forestry Department has been pointing the finger of blame to the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC), which came under public scrutiny almost a month after the blaze when then Agriculture Minister Fotis Fotiou said he had ‘no doubt’ in his mind that faulty cables had set off the fire. The accusations were strongly refuted by the EAC, as were the findings of the Electromechanical Services’ investigation into the matter, which blamed the Authority’s faulty cables for the fire.
When the inferno broke out on June 29, 2007, state-owned and private forest, private properties and farms, as well as private homes and other establishments were completely destroyed. According to the Forestry Department’s estimations, the immediate damages are around €29,163,701, of which €22,331,918 affect land belonging to the state. The department also calculates it will need €1,663,879 to restore the damage.
THE INVESTIGATION
AFTER gathering witness reports and suspecting an EAC cable that transported electricity between Karvounas and Trimiklini had something to do with the fire, the Limassol Police Chief sent a letter to the District Engineer of the Limassol Department of Electromechanical Services requesting a probe into the reasons behind the fire.
The Department’s Director appointed a four-member investigating team, as well as calling on the services of two university professors from Arizona and Cyprus.
The report, which was completed in January 2008, mentioned that the specific cable, which had been deactivated between March 26 and June 28, 2007, had been reactivated at 10.47am on the day of the fire; at 12.54 pm – the time when the fire broke out – a fault with the cable was registered.
According to the report, the investigating team concluded with a high rate of certainty that the fire was caused by sparks in the electricity cable, which fell on a clump of eucalyptuses under the cable.
However, in an explanatory note by a Legal Services’ officer dated March 19, 2008, an examination of the evidence does not substantiate a criminal case for negligence, as the necessary extent of negligence cannot be proved in order to make prosecutions.
The EAC insists that the fault occurred after the fire had broken out. In a briefing to the Auditor-general, the EAC Chairman presented a detailed report on the incident, complete with evidence, showing that the cable error had taken place five minutes after the fire had started.
In fact, the Electricity Authority claims it was the fire that affected the cable and not the other way around.
The head of the Forestry Department, Aristos Ioannou, said yesterday he was unsure why the Attorney-general had decided there wasn’t enough evidence to compose a case against the EAC, especially taking into consideration the Electromechanical Services’ report.
“But this doesn’t mean that just because the EAC has no criminal responsibilities in this aspect that it isn’t responsible elsewhere,” he pointed out, hinting that an investigation was still underway. “There were eye witnesses who were at the scene of the fire and saw how it broke out.”
