Images show miles of land in Greece “turning into one enormous lake” after a rainstorm hit – with rescue helicopters working to save people left stranded in villages that have been inundated by floodwaters .
Seven people are dead, with six missing, including a couple on their honeymoon, and many left clinging to the roofs of their homes in Thessaly, central Greece.
Emergency services are searching for the couple from Graz, Austria after rains swept away the bungalow in which they were staying. But the house in the beach resort of Potistika, near Mount Pelion, was washed into the sea by flash floods, the owner of the accommodation, Thanasis Samaras, told the BBC. He and other guests left for higher ground and he said he had advised the couple to join them.
People in central Greece were trapped on the roofs of their houses after floods left whole villages under water.
Hundreds of people have been left stranded without food or water for a third day, after water levels reached 2m (6.6 feet) in some areas.
Flooding triggered by rainstorms also hit neighbouring Bulgaria and Turkey, killing a total of 18 people in all three countries since the rains began on Tuesday.
The storm – thought to be Greece’s worst since records began – caused widespread floods which turned the usually idyllic landscape of the Mediterranean island into near-apocalyptic scenes.
The three-day deluge in Greece – in which, meteorologist George Tsatrafyllias said, one region received more rain in 24 hours than London does in an average year – followed weeks of wildfires and the country’s hottest summer on record.
Scientists say Greece is on the front line of climate change, with freak weather incidents increasingly common.
“Its just one event after the other,” said Christos Zerefos, head at the Athens Academy Research Centre for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology.
“(The storm) was called Daniel because it predicts what will happen if we do nothing about climate change,” Mr Zerefos said, referring to a Biblical figure who was said to have prophesied an apocalypse.
Storm Daniel, which meteorologists said was the worst to hit the country since records began in 1930, has left a trail of ruin across Thessaly.
Homes were swept away by torrents, bridges collapsed, roads were made impassable, power lines fell and crops in one of Greece’s main breadbasket regions wiped out.
“I don’t think we have realised the magnitude of this disaster yet,” Professor Efthymios Lekkas, a disaster management expert, told state broadcaster ERT on Friday.
On Friday, authorities issued evacuation orders for three areas around the central city of Larissa amid concern the river Pineios, the third-longest in Greece, could burst its banks.
The number of missing remained unclear. Greek authorities mounted a massive rescue operation, deploying helicopters to winch people off rooftops, as well as inflatables.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the crisis-hit area on Friday. He cancelled a trip scheduled for Saturday to the northern city of Thessaloniki, where he was to deliver his annual keynote speech on the state of the economy.
Dozens of villages in the low-lying Thessaly region were submerged in water and local officials appealed for help via television stations.
“What we are living through is unprecedented .. a plain became a sea,” said Michalis Sakellariou, 61.
Speaking to ERT, Thessaly Governor Kostas Agorastos said he estimated the storm had caused around three times the 700 million euros (£600 million) of damage inflicted by extensive floods in 2020.
More than 1,800 people had been rescued from flood-struck areas across Greece since Tuesday, the fire brigade said.
Thessaly accounts for about 15 percent of the country’s annual agricultural output and is a major cotton-producing area.
Torrential rains left more than a metre of silt dumped on once-fertile soils. “The agricultural production isn’t destroyed just for this year. The thick coat of silt means it is no longer fertile,” Mr Lekkas said.
Additional reporting by agencies