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Six people are dead after a powerful explosion tore through a small two-storey building in the Plaka district, the historic heart of Athens, bringing the structure down and crushing those inside, Greek authorities said on Saturday. Rescue teams recovered the bodies from the rubble more than a day after Friday's blast, and the death toll has turned an investigation into a tragedy that has also raised urgent questions about warnings residents say they made about gas risks in the neighbourhood a full year ago.
Among the dead are four travellers whose identity was established through personal documents and belongings recovered at the scene. Greek state broadcaster ERT, along with other local media, reported that the two men and two women were United States citizens. According to the daily Kathimerini, the group was due to check out of its accommodation at around 11:00am (08:00 GMT) on Friday but never boarded their flight home, a detail that helps explain how the four were in the collapsed building at the time of the blast.
The remaining two victims were an elderly couple living on the building's second floor — a British man and a Greek woman, according to reports. Their presence in the same structure suggests that the blast, and the subsequent collapse, caught residents of the property as well as visitors staying nearby.
Two women were also injured, the fire department said, in a building adjacent to the site. Their injuries appear to be the only other casualties reported so far, though officials have not ruled out further medical checks as the emergency response continues.
Athens Mayor Haris Doukas said the explosion was believed to have been caused by a major gas leak. Speaking at or near the scene, he described a catastrophe extending well beyond the single ruined building. "The damage extends to the entire street as well as the street behind [the building]," Doukas said, adding: "We are talking about an unimaginable catastrophe." Neighbouring properties were damaged as a result of the blast and were evacuated, he said.
The structural consequences could be lasting. Two adjoining buildings were left severely damaged and may have to be demolished, the mayor said — a prospect that raises questions about heritage protection in one of the city's most tightly regulated neighbourhoods. Plaka sits at the foot of the Acropolis, Greece's most visited ancient monument, and is a magnet for visitors, which means the safety of the district's ageing, closely packed housing stock is a matter of both cultural conservation and public interest.
The circumstances surrounding the blast have already become contentious, with residents' groups saying they raised concerns about gas and electrical hazards in the area well before the explosion. A group of Plaka residents alerted the municipality as well as the managers of the electricity and gas networks about the risk of short circuits or gas leaks in the neighbourhood about a year ago, according to a letter published by Kathimerini.
In that letter, the residents called for a security exercise to be organised so that any potential weaknesses in the area's emergency response system could be identified. The suggestion amounts to a pre-warning that, if carried out, might have exposed at least some of the gaps that appear to have been involved in Friday's disaster.
A separate citizen movement, "We Remain Active", said on social media that a resident of the very street where the explosion occurred had reported a smell of gas for several weeks and had warned the relevant authorities. The claim, if confirmed, raises the possibility that a dangerous accumulation of gas may have been known in the building or its immediate surroundings before the blast occurred.
A Greek police spokeswoman confirmed on ERT that residents had indeed made such reports. However, she cautioned that the nature of the substance and its origin have not yet been determined, meaning the investigation is still at an early stage and official findings on the precise cause of the explosion are not yet established.
For now, investigators face a scene that rescuers described on Saturday as still yielding victims, with emergency crews working amid the debris of a collapsed building in a dense, heavily visited district. The combination of a suspected utility failure, prior public warnings and an unwritten preparedness exercise has turned the recovery operation into something that is likely to be examined far beyond the immediate emergency response.
The deaths of four American citizens in a foreign country are also expected to prompt consular involvement and, potentially, further cooperation between US and Greek investigators as the cause of the explosion is established. The six dead include visitors and residents of the same building, united only by the fact that they were inside a structure whose collapse appears to have been sudden, total and, on current evidence, potentially preventable.
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