Evros floods, weather kills 2
Thousands of hectares of fields in Thrace were inundated yesterday when the River Evros in Thrace broke its banks, while two people drowned in swollen torrents on Saturday as most of Greece remained in the grip of a freezing spell. Meanwhile, after the destruction wreaked on the new national road from Megalopolis to Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese last week, a section of the highway from Tripolis to Corinth collapsed yesterday in landslides caused by heavy rain over the past few days. Nobody was hurt, but motorists had to make long detours around the site of the incident, near Nemea in the northeastern Peloponnese. In Thrace, the Evros, swollen by rain and melting snow, broke its banks at two points on the Greek side, causing extensive damage to crops in the area. The destruction was even worse on the Turkish side, where the overflow helped reduce the pressure on the Greek, western bank. In a village near Drama, Kyriakos Lazaridis, 67, drowned in his car trying to ford a swollen stream. Farmer Ilias Georgoulis died in a similar accident near Krokees, south of Sparta.
