Residents of the small Greek farming village of Metamorfosi voted to relocate the entire community after it was inundated by floodwaters in September, Reuters reports.
Storm Danielle wreaked havoc across the Mediterranean in early September, killing sixteen people, including two who drowned in Metamorfosi.
Since then, the village has resembled a ghost town, and residents told Reuters in November that they had no choice but to relocate to a safer place.
A proposal to build new homes in the neighbouring village of Palamas, about 8 km (5 miles) away, was approved by 142 residents against 14 in an informal charter vote, said Petros Kontogiannis, chairman of the Metamorfosi community. About 15 abstained, he said. Kontogiannis told Reuters:
The vote shows that people cannot bear to live through this again. There is hope that we will have homes that will ensure our safety.
Palamas municipal authorities officially approved the plan on Tuesday. Residents will now submit the proposal to the government along with a technical study that cites “repeated flooding” and the geomorphology of Metamorphosi as reasons for the relocation. The government has said it will consider relocating Metamorfosi, whose name means “transformation” in Greek. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament last month:
I, personally, am completely open to it. Let’s build a new Metamorfosi, a new village, with contemporary standards, that will finally be safe from floods, so that these people don’t drown every 30 years.
