3 dead in building fires across Greece

Three people lost their lives in building fires in three different incidents across Greece, authorities announced on Friday, as the government examines ways to restore power supply to households living in poverty. The causes of the tragedies, which occurred within a few hours at Piraeus port district and northern Greece, have not been clarified yet by fire brigade experts. However, neighbors of the victims and representatives of local administrations in statements to media linked the tragedies directly or indirectly to the debt crisis, calling for measures to ease the pressure on the poor. At Piraeus, the fire brigade retrieved the body of the 62-year-old owner from a small apartment on the rooftop of a hotel which had closed down. In the northern city of Komotini, a 54-year-old man died in a fire which broke out in a derelict, abandoned building which used to house offices of the state-run Manpower Employment Organization. The fire brigade suspects the man lived in the abandoned warehouse. At the city port of Thessaloniki, an 86-year-old woman died in a fire which started at her small home from the makeshift fireplace, according to the investigation so far. Neighbors said that she could not afford to buy heating oil. A 13-year-old Serbian girl also died of carbon monoxide poisoning earlier this week, as her unemployed mother lit a wood stove to warm up their apartment after the power supply was disconnected due to unpaid bills. With an increase in the number of such tragedies, the government said it was examining ways to restore electricity supply to households under certain criteria. According to estimates from the Regulatory Authority for Energy, there are 350,000 households and businesses which had electricity supply disconnected in recent months due to unpaid bills. As people struggle to overcome the crisis, there have been some 3,000 cases of illegal reconnection according to estimates and hundreds of cases have already been referred to justice. People who resort to such steps claim that they have no other option to survive. Since the start of the Greek debt crisis in late 2009, the average household has estimated to lose up to 40 percent of its income and purchasing power after rounds of salary cuts and tax increases. Unemployment has hit record highs of 28 percent with more than 1 million people jobless.