Flood risk drives Greek village to seek relocation
STORY: This is Metamorfosi – a small Greek village home to roughly 240 people.
It sits in the lowest point of Greece’s agriculture heartland and in September, when Storm Daniel hit, it nearly disappeared beneath the water.
Residents fled and more than a dozen people were killed.
Now those who live in Metamorfosi want their entire community relocated... terrified it cannot survive another round of extreme weather.
Storm Daniel, which scientists linked to climate change, was the worst since records began in Greece a century ago.
And it wasn’t the first time Metamorfosi completely flooded.
Eighty-year-old farmer and resident Vassilis Tsatsarelis says he saw it inundated in 1953 and 1994.
He supports the relocation, in the hope that future generations will not have to face the same devastation he has.
TSATSARELIS: “When I entered the house my heart broke. I said to myself, Vassilis, your life is coming to an end, how will you live now?”
It's a question that village president Petros Kontogiannis has been dealing with.
“Our village will constantly be in danger, every year, perhaps even in two months, or three, we don’t know when. So, we did not just wake up one day and say let’s relocate the village. It has been sparked by the nightmarish images we lived that night, and from the phenomena that keeps re-occurring over and over again.”
He says anti-flood projects could take years to finish, leaving residents with relocation as the only solution.
In September, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the government was open to the idea but only if locals wanted it and evidence showed no government project could offer protection.
This week, residents in Metamorfosi will hold an informal vote on a proposal to erect new houses in Palamas village - some 5 miles away.
They plan to take the proposal to the government alongside a study that cites “repeated flooding” and the village's geomorphology as reasons for the move.
If it were to happen, Metamorfosi would likely keep its name.
Village president Kontogiannis says it's not something residents want to do, even if the proposed new location is close by.
"Unfortunately, it has to happen," he says. "We have to leave our houses, in order to safeguard our lives.”
