On the anniversary of a deadly forest fire that left 102 people dead near Athens last year, Greek shipowner Marios Iliopoulos received an award from a local mayor to honour the role his ferry company Seajets played in evacuating scores of victims.
The fire swooped down from the slopes of Attica’s hills to ravage a beachside resort, trapping hundreds of local residents and bathers exposed to the flames and smoke.
Seajets, which uses the nearby port of Rafina as a hub for its Aegean routes, was quick to dispatch crew and rescue boats to pick up more than a hundred people who had sought refuge on the beaches, perched on rocks or jumping in the water.
Iliopoulos, whose official title is Seajets’ director of development and strategic planning, received the award from Rafina Mayor Evangelos Bournous.
Bournous contacted Iliopoulos during the fire to also provide cranes and vehicles to unblock clogged roads and provide food supplies to the area. "We've been friends since that fateful day," Iliopoulos said.
The blaze, commonly known as the Mati tragedy after the name of the seaside settlement that suffered the full force of the flames, elicited an outpour of solidarity from Greece’s shipping community.
Grants and donations worth far above €30m ($33.6m) have been given since from entities such as the Stavros Niarchos and Onassis foundations and the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS), companies such as GasLog and individual owners including Evangelos Marinakis. Seajet said it set aside for fire victims a tenth of the net fare of each passenger who travelled on its 11,400-gt Tera Jet (built 1999) from Rafina last year.
Iliopoulos said he has donated more than €1m in other charitable donations this year, including a simulator on a maritime academy, for which he is about to receive an award from the Greek Orthodox bishop of the Greek island of Syros.
