Samos church roof miracle
As much of Greece remained snowbound yesterday, a motorist on the eastern Aegean island of Samos had a narrow brush with death after an icy road caused his car to skid over a cliff and land on a church roof. The 23-year-old man, whose name was not made public, survived unscathed, while his car was a write-off. The roof of the Church of Panaghia, under the road linking Mytilinioi and Hora, was badly damaged. Roads remained impassable to most vehicles in many parts of the country over the weekend, with eastern Crete particularly badly affected. Even on the outskirts of Athens, cars needed snow chains to use roads on Mt Parnitha and Mt Pendeli, while traffic police warned of ice on many roads in northern Attica. On Saturday, Aegean Minister Nikos Sifounakis, along with top civil defence, military and energy officials, visited the northeastern Aegean island of Lemnos, whose electricity network was 88 percent wiped out by last week’s hurricane. The weekend’s lowest temperature was -16 Celsius (3 Fahrenheit), at Nevrokopi, near Drama.
