The public's response to the concert that Pyx Lax performed yesterday in Geraka Square in Athens to collect essential items for the flood victims of Thessaly was touching.
At least 6,000 citizens of Pallini participated in the call made by the candidate, Mayor Christos Aidonis, who invited the popular band to perform the last concert of its summer tour for the people who were severely tested by the severe weather that recently hit Thessaly.
Both Pyx Lax and Christos Aidonis thanked the audience for their warm participation, which exceeded all expectations, and in this way and with their practical offer, they sent a strong message of solidarity to every affected fellow human being.
After the end of the concert, Christos Aidonis said: "We prove that in difficult times, we are all together, united. I thank my friends and fellow travellers in music and social activities, the PYX-LAX. I thank all our citizens, executives, and friends of our combination "Smart and Humane City" for this great embrace of love they have opened for the people of Thessaly. This embrace will remain open, and we will continue to be by their side as long as needed!"
Meanwhile, tourism enterprises in Thessaly, hit by Storm Daniel, will need more than a year to recover losses and restore damage, said the Federation of Hellenic Associations of Tourist & Travel Agencies (FedHATTA), calling on the government to take immediate measures.
In a letter to relevant ministries, FedHATTA is urging the government to support affected tourism businesses, which will be missing out on tourism this fall, a peak season for the region, and may face a severe risk of ruin.
“Restoring the damages – to whatever extent this is possible – will be a particularly difficult and time-consuming task,” said FedHATTA, adding that tourism activity in the region has been “completely destroyed and is not possible to begin to recover before next year, at best”.
Damages listed include destroyed trails and no access to several popular destinations on Mt Pelion, including those on cruise ship itineraries.
According to FedHATTA, all tourist activity to the Pelion area and Thessaly has been cancelled.
At the same time, the removal of dead farm animals in Thessaly is 75% complete, Deputy Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Evangelos Tournas said in Parliament on Monday.
He was responding to a question tabled in Parliament by Plefsi Zois party leader Zoi Konstantopoulou about progress in the collection of farm animals that drowned during unprecedented rain and floods in central Greece.
As Tournas said, the Agricultural Development Ministry has “registered the losses and gone ahead to remove, bury or cremate dead animals. Some 110,000 dead animals and 135,000 poultry have been registered as lost. At this point, 75% of the dead animals have been collected and the remainder are in stagnant waters.”
He added that farmers have claimed higher numbers of animals owned. Floods, he clarified, killed “110,000 animals compared to 1.7 million registered and declared in the region of Thessaly. In other words, only 7% of animals were lost in Thessaly, and, of course, a much lower number of them compared to the total national number.”
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