Paphos People

A Sudden Explosion
The eleventh of July 2011 0700, I woke up and went to make the coffee, filled the kettle then nothing. Another power cut!
“Oh well that’s not uncommon” I thought and put a pan of water on the gas hob. Coffee made we sat in bed drinking in silence no radio, no news, blimey we might have to talk to each other!
As the day wore on it soon became apparent that the electricity would not be on soon, then slowly the news filtered through that there had been a huge explosion at the main power station at Mari near to Limassol.
The story began to open up as the day wore on and it was almost unbelievable- but not- apparently.
What happened? Well, in 2009 a ship was intercepted in Cyprus waters by the US Navy on a journey from Iran to Syria and found to be carrying illegal armaments. Dynamite, gunpowder, shells and ammunition, for use in the Gaza strip conflict. The cargo was confiscated by the Cyprus authorities. The ninety eight twenty ton containers of high explosives were stored in the open in a field at the naval base next door to the main power station.
The USA, UK, Germany, and France all offered to dispose of the explosives safely. However President Christofias thought that they would be a useful bargaining tool for Cyprus in negotiations with Syria. They were in dispute about illegal ferry and freight shipping between Syria and TRNC (The North of Cyprus). So he decided to keep them.
As time went on these explosives became more and more unstable, and naval fire crews were spraying the now bulging containers with water in an effort to keep them cool.
On July 11th, a small brush fire started in the early hours near the naval base and civilian fire fighters were sent to deal with it. Unfortunately it got out of hand and spread to the naval base igniting one of the containers and causing a chain reaction with the other eighty nine.
The resulting explosion killed 6 firefighters and 6 naval crew including the head of the navy, also injuring another sixty five, three of whom died. The fishing village of Zigi a couple of kilometres down the coast was hit by the shock wave and most windows and doors were blown in. But the main force was against the power station which was destroyed and put out of action for at least the next 6 months, by which time they hoped to get one of the generators back on line.
It was insured but only like for like, so that meant another heavy oil fired power station would have to be built, instead of a cleaner more efficient type. However Cyprus was not insured against loss of business from non supply of electricity. Their easiest alternative was to purchase the electricity from the TRNC not an ideal situation politically or a cheap one!
For the next three months there were daily power cuts of two or three hours across the island as they tried to share out what electricity that was available.
The Communist President then immediately went into hiding for four days and there were nightly demonstrations outside the presidential palace in Nicosia by Cypriot citizens demanding his resignation which went on for months. His government ministers had all resigned as had the head of the armed forces. But he would not go! If he could not form a new government, there would have to be another election. Somehow he survived to serve out his time but with no hope of re-election. He retired to live in Nicosia until his death on 23rd July 2019.
The estimated cost of rebuilding the power station was over two billion euro, so everybody had to expect taxes and electricity bills to go up a bit! Of course they did.