Greece's Migrant State of Emergency

"Some people do not respect the country that is hosting them, and they strive to prove they are not looking for a passport to a better life."

"They will not leave [the island] because of the fire."

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas 

 

"Under the stars, I'm going to sleep under the stars like all these people here."

"[I've] nowhere to go since everything burned so we slept outside and we'll continue here."

Leonie Raymon, refugee from Cameroon

 

"In the past few days we've been living through unprecedented situations with daily fires."

"We've reached our limits. We're anxious, we feel insecure, we're fed up, we don't know how to act anymore."

Moria's municipal community leader Yiannis Mastroyannis

 

"There is a terrible reality with these fires. Many children, women, men are in these camps in absolutely terrible conditions. We want to show solidarity with Greece that lives up to European values."

French President Emmanuel Macron 

"I recognize the difficult conditions. However, nothing can become an alibi for violent reactions to health checks. And, much more, for riots of this magnitude."

"The situation in Moria cannot continue because it is a matter of public health, humanity and national security at the same time."

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Migrants flee from the Moria refugee camp during second a fire, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

During a huge migration wave that swamped Europe in 2015-16, with migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who left the nearby Turkish coast with the intention of entering Europe by way of Greece and Italy, the camp at Moria on the Greek Island of Lesbos was set up to accommodate several thousand people. It ended up with many more than it was intended to service, becoming a sprawling squalid camp, condemned by human rights groups. For those who flooded into Greece, the intention was to move on to wealthier European countries.

Some, like Germany, the destination of many of the migrants who knew of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's willing absorption of a million migrants was their target, but the state, under growing pressure from alarmed German citizens along with violent incidents emanating from a proportion of the migrants, reversed its earlier stance. Countries of the European Union mandated to accept a share of the migrants to relieve the burden on Italy and Greece, finally felt they had reached the limits of their absorption capacity and balked at accepting additional migrants.

 

Now, in the wake of a massive fire in the largest migrant camp for asylum seekers in Europe, 12,500 migrants formerly placed under coronavirus quarantine are without shelter. Authorities were faced with a humanitarian crisis that eclipsed the one that existed prior to the fire. At the same time Greek investigators are trying to figure out whether a connection existed between the conflagration and anger on the part of the migrants over an erupting camp outbreak of coronavirus.

 

Smoke rises at the burnt camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos on Wednesday the morning after a major fire broke out.

 

According to three eyewitnesses the fire began as a protest against mandatory new quarantine measures. The blaze broke out after migrants who tested positive for the virus or were exposed, refused to go into isolation, according to a semi-official Greek news agency. Arson is being investigated as a possible cause of the blaze. Overnight, people fled the camp, as tents and shipping containers became engulfed in flames. There were no injuries or deaths reported. But police surrounded the camp attempting to ensure that the migrants remained within the vicinity of the camp.

Moria had been a site where protests, fatal fires and chronic sickness took place, filled well beyond capacity, cited by international aid groups as being unsafe and inhumane. It remained in operation not because Greece wanted to continue hosting the migrants, but because there was simply nowhere else for them to go. They kept arriving because the previous waves had succeeded in distributing themselves around Europe. And more latterly, Turkey used them as a threat to coerce Europe to fund its own refugee camps.

 

"Events in Moria last night are unthinkable but, tragically, predictable as the dire situation on the islands has gone on for far too long", the Greece country director for the International Rescue Committee -- Dimitra Kalogeropoulou noted of the residents that had fled from the fire, but are "now left with nothing". 

Refugees and migrants with their children gather on a bridge on Wednesday after the fire at the camp.

Last week officials visiting the camp had identified the first three positive cornavirus case and a testing campaign that followed detected another 35 positive cases, leading to the camp being placed under lockdown. The new Greek government devised a blueprint to close Moria and other island centres to create more permanent structures, in the face of local resistance where the new permanent structures might be placed.

 

Some asylum seekers have been gradually transferred to the mainland. Other European Union countries have agreed to accept some of the most vulnerable among the migrants, unaccompanied minors in particular, to rescue them from a camp that ended up holding ten times the number of people it was originally designed to house.

People grasp for food on Thursday, September 10 after fires destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos

 

Offending Sociopathic Neighbours

"[A criminal investigation had been opened.] A person, a woman, who lived in the building has been arrested."
"At this stage, with what we know, the incident appears to be criminal … This person was arrested in the night not far from the fire [and] she is in custody. [The woman had a history of mental health problems]."
Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz

"She had tried to break my window and door in revenge … when I came across her she told me good luck and said I was a fireman so I must like flames."
"Then I smelled something burning and I realised she’d set the whole floor alight."
"[I later saw the woman outside], trying to set fire to two dustbins."
Off-duty Paris firefighter, resident, apartment building

"It was a particularly violent fire."
"The fire has damaged the structure of the building and until we can check, we can’t rule out the risk of it collapsing."
Capt Clement Cognon, Paris fire service

"I climbed across several balconies, with nothing beneath, and then was backed into a corner."
"There were people climbing hand-over-hand to get to where I was and escape the flames."
Claire, building resident

Should anyone, aware that something isn't quite right about a neighbour, risk alienating and offending them beyond what any sane person could imagine, if their behaviour impacts on your own quality of life, living in a shared structure like an apartment building? People do have an obligation of courtesy to others, not to infringe on the comfort and quality of life of other people through indulging in acts that will impact others, and noise is certainly one of those offences.

In this instance, a young firefighter who lived in an apartment building, approached a neighbour, a 40-year-old woman who didn't appreciate his complaint that loud music emanating from her apartment was disturbing and making it very difficult for him and his girlfriend to enjoy the comfort of their own home, much less enabling them to get a good night's sleep. Who could imagine that a request for consideration of others would result in a deadly fire set in malicious spite?



A fire deliberately set to teach a young man a 'lesson' against impinging on the sensitivities of someone living in close proximity whose own sensibilities were obviously set in opposition to any reasonable request to tamp down night-time noise levels. The lesson was that ten people lost their lives when flames engulfed the nine-storey apartment building, causing panicked residents to clamber dangerously over and around balconies and climbing to the building's roof in a risky attempt to escape the flames.

The fire that ensued represented the deadliest fire in over ten years that the city of Paris has had to contend with. The responding fire crews unfurled their rescue ladders bit by bit to hook them to the structure, risking their own safety in a bid to rescue residents from the building's burning upper floors. No fewer than 50 people were secured and taken to safety by emergency personnel, the firefighters who saw their obligation as saving lives in a catastrophic fire that took five hours to bring under control by over 250 firefighters deployed to the scene.

Neighbours later recounted overhearing the woman and her off-duty firefighter neighbour arguing over the loudly intrusive music coming from the woman's apartment prior to the fire. Police were called and in responding to the dispute were informed by the young man that he and his girlfriend were leaving the apartment to find peaceful sleep somewhere other than in their apartment. They felt the neighbour had lost her mind, they added, and one day an accident would occur because of her behaviour. That 'accident' wasn't long in coming.

Parisians firefighters in action after a fire broke out at an apartment in the 16th district of western Paris, France, 05 February 2019.     EPA/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

The 22-year-old firefighter recounted returning to the building shortly afterward around midnight, in hopes that the woman herself had left the building. He ran into her in the stairwell, where smoke was already becoming evident. "She wished me good luck, telling me that I loved flames", he recalled. Later yet, another resident informed the young man that the woman had placed paper and wood in front of his apartment door to create a fire.

After he had come across the woman on her way down the stairwell as he ran to the upper floor where his apartment was located, he attempted to evacuate the building, alerting people to the fire. An off-duty police officer, another apartment resident, rang doorbell after doorbell, hoping to alert as many people as possible to escape the building as fire spread and chaos broke out among the residents. "I couldn't save everyone, I can't forgive myself", the man said of the smoke and flames that kept him from climbing beyond the fourth floor.

"I want to salute the huge mobilization of the Paris firefighters. More than 250 people arrived immediately and, throughout the night, saved over fifty people in truly exceptional conditions."
Christophe Castaner, French Interior Minister

The Paris fire service says 10 people have been killed and at least 28 injured in a fire in a residential building.
Benoit Moser/BSPP via AP