About 100 homes and businesses were seriously damaged by Saturday’s torrential rains in the Larnaca area, with about 50 people already housed in nearby hotels and the Interior Minister promising emergency aid.
Media coverage throughout the weekend showed homes and buildings flooded as the sudden torrent brought a gush of water and mud down the Tremithos river, with the nearby Kiti reservoir unable to hold any of it.
As a result, cars were thrown off the streets and mud poured into many houses in the western area of Larnaca, while the Kamares area, a traditional swampland near the Salt Lake that has seen uncontrolled development, was flooded and looked like a man-made lake, with several parked cars destroyed or full of water.
The scenes of destruction were similar to the torrential rains seen in Nicosia on Wednesday, where few homes were seriously affected, but many cars and their drivers were stuck in waist-high waters.
Interior Minister Socrates Hasikos did not spare criticism for the Larnaca public services when he arrived on-site on Sunday morning to review the damage and speak to people affected, saying that “these people cannot be blamed for the shoddy planning and work of the relevant state services.”
Admitting that the torrent was mainly to blame for the damage, Hasikos said that the riverbed should have been cleaned early, structural walls should have been built and the potential flow should have been calculated.
“We must revise all our plans to avoid similar disasters in the future,” he said.
On Monday morning, he told state CyBC radio that he had spoken to Finance Minister Haris Georghiades to secure ample compensation to all the affected families.
However, despite the sudden storm bursts, the water eventually seeped into the ground or hurried to the sea, as the rainfall was mainly in the central and eastern areas, with hardly enough in the mountains to capture amounts in the dams.
According to the Water Development Dept., the nationwide total in all of the 18 network dams is still at a mere 27.7% of capacity, exactly half the amount this time last year.
Only the medium-sized dam at Kalopanayiotis was 100% on Monday morning, with the rest averaging from 54.3% and 54.1%, respectively, at the larger Kannaviou and Asprokremmos dams, to a mere 7.7% at Achna and a near-empty 4.7% at Kalavassos.
The island’s biggest dam at Kouris, with a capacity of 110 mln cubic metres, is only 17.6% full, while according to year-earlier data it had reached 54.3%. Yermasoyia dam, the second biggest supplier to Limassol, is at a mere 9.7% of its capacity.
The biggest flow into dams in recent years were recorded from December 2009 to March 2010.
The national rainfall average over the past three days was 36.5mm, according to the Meteorology Dept., with the total for December at 56.7mm, only 54% of the monthly average.
Rainfall calculated at the Athienou observation point showed 134% above the monthly average and at Larnaca airport at 74%. The only highest levels of rainfall so far this month were recorded at Nicosia and Kornos, both at 94%.
