Last year on such a day I was driving towards Kalamata. The day before, I got a few days’ leave from the medium I was working for at the time to go to my village. There was a shipwreck near Pylas in the evening, my village was relatively close, it goes without saying that in such cases you cancel the ticket yourself and hurry to cover up the tragedy.
The first stop is the port of the city. Where were the survivors put in storage. I remember that the presence of EL.AS was strong. and the Coast Guard, no one could have contact with the refugees except the authorities, doctors, etc. There were also cameras everywhere. Foreign TV channels, Greek channels, foreign journalists, an incredible hive of media people trying to find out “how” and “why”. We talked to each other, if only something could be added to the mystery of the tragedy.
The second stop was the city hospital. Where those who needed help were treated. I spoke on the phone with cardiologist Manolis Makaris, who rushed to help in an extremely difficult situation for a provincial hospital. Somehow we met in the hospital cafe and he told me five things about the tragedy from the point of view of a doctor on the field. He was visibly shaken.
We did it only after a while. He was constantly receiving calls from abroad. The night before he had given his number on the air in some program, it became known everywhere, as a result of which he received calls from relatives of refugees from various countries to see if he could give them information about their own people.
At one point, the then president of SYRIZA-PS, Alexis Tsipras, also arrived at the hospital. Earlier, at the port, he had an intense verbal confrontation with the then Acting Minister of Civil Defense Evangelos Tournas in front of the media. The reason was the minister’s research on exonerating the Greek authorities from any responsibility by developing a justification that concluded that “there was no possibility of intervention”.
“So you mean to tell us, Mr. Minister, that an overloaded ship moving at sea is doomed to sink? Is there no interference? What is it now?” asked Alexis Tsipras with visible irritation.
If I remember anything more vividly, it is that, apart from the heat of the day, there was an incredible buzz everywhere. There were so many people at the port and in the hospital, but everyone spoke in whispers.
The testimonies of survivors who reported that there were more drowned have already been published. I remember a colleague from another newspaper was looking at the sea and after a while he said to me. “Do you want him to start washing corpses tonight?”