When record-breaking floods hit central Greece in 2023, entire villages were uprooted. Some of those left houseless remain in the refugee camp where they were relocated — a stark glimpse of Europe’s new reality, where climate disasters are displacing citizens alongside migrants.
When floods swept through the village of Farkadona, in Greece’s Thessaly region, in September 2023, water rose to the ceiling of Annoula Valiakou’s home. Built by her parents in the 1970s, the house was left uninhabitable, one of hundreds in the region left partly standing but reduced to mud and rubble inside. The storm dumped more rain in a single day than Greece had ever recorded. For Valiakou, 59, what remained was “total destruction.”
In the days after the record-shattering downpour that turned Thessaly’s plains into an inland sea, Solomon visited as families from Farkadona and surrounding villages were moved to a nearby settlement. Army crews hammered poles into the ground and stretched white canvas across them, raising an improvised encampment for the roughly 80 people who had nowhere else to go.
The encampment was never meant as a long-term solution. With the threat of more heavy rain hanging over the region, officials began urging residents to relocate again — this time not to a makeshift canvas camp but to Koutsochero, a formal refugee reception center a short drive away, already known for housing asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries.
From the outset, many villagers resisted.
For Valiakou, the prospect of living in a refugee camp felt unthinkable. For years, such facilities had been associated with outsiders — people arriving in Greece by boat or on foot. The center was fenced, monitored, kept at a distance. “We all want to stay in the place where we grew up,” she told Solomon on a bright afternoon in September 2023, standing on the grassy field beside the tent she shared with her cousin. But as the weeks dragged on and their homes remained waterlogged, refusal gave way to necessity, and Koutsochero was cleared of nearly 900 asylum-seekers to make way for roughly 180 Greek flood victims, including Valiakou.
Two years later, Solomon returned to Farkadona and the surrounding villages to trace what became of those displaced by the floods.
State documents and on-the-ground reporting — including interviews with people still living in Koutsochero, with local officials promising long-delayed housing projects, and with experts warning that climate disasters are accelerating rural decline — reveal a portrait of overlapping crises: families left in limbo as government aid stalls, millions of euros spent on never-used housing facilities and “temporary” fixes, and a refugee infrastructure now repurposed to shelter Greece’s own disaster victims.
This cross-border project with Italy’s Meridio News reveals that across southern Europe, similar stories are emerging — from Greece’s lands to Italy’s islands — as climate and migration pressures converge.
For years, I’ve reported on migration to Greece, documenting the journeys of Syrian, Afghan, Palestinian, Sudanese, and other people who passed through these very same camps. In 2015 alone, more than 800,000 people entered Europe through Greece, most landing on its islands during what became known as the migration crisis.
As one of the European Union’s main external border states, Greece continues to be a gateway and a host for displaced people entering Europe.
Valiakou’s story captures a new reality: Greek citizens themselves are now being uprooted, sheltered in infrastructure once built for refugees of war — sometimes down the road from them. For years I reported on that displacement. Now, for the first time, I was watching Greek residents experience a version of the same reality.
The echoes were striking. In Farkadona, some residents had to be rescued by boat, ferried through streets that had turned into rivers — scenes reminiscent of the perilous crossings I had reported on in the Mediterranean. Later, when army crews raised rows of white tents, the settlement resembled the facilities run by the UN Refugee Agency on the Aegean islands, where new arrivals first came ashore.
“It’s a crazy irony,” said Penelope Papailias, a social anthropologist at the University of Thessaly whose work traces the legacies of displacement in Greece, referring to the spectacle of Greek citizens displaced by climate disaster now living in Koutsochero. “Do they see any alliance with them?”
Camp officials understood how extraordinary the moment was. “It was the first time it happened in Greece. It may never have happened before in the world that one space, one camp… is simultaneously hosting native and migrant populations,” Apostolos Papaparisis, Koutsochero’s then-director, told Solomon in September 2024. He called it “a global experiment… with absolute success.”
For those inside, the reality was more complicated. Edita Filerova, who stayed in the camp for eight months with her family, through that first winter, remembered the relief of arriving. “We said, ‘It’s just for the winter, it will pass.’ It was an immediate solution… There was heating, there was hot water, there was food. We have no complaints.”
But when refugees returned, tensions surfaced.
“Some [Greek] people left, because they were afraid,” she said. “They’d say that since they’re from war-torn countries, who knows what they’re like.” Even her own children began repeating racist remarks they overheard from adults. She gathered them together and tried to explain: “We’re here in the camp because we were flooded… But others who are now here, they’re fleeing a war. You will return to your house someday — they can’t. These are the kinds of situations that test your humanity.” Filerova is Czech and emigrated to Greece decades ago, settling in the Thessaly region.
At Koutsochero camp, where Solomon gained rare access last year, residents were kept apart. On one side were the flood victims, on the other the refugees — divided down the middle by a road. “We had no contact with them,” Filerova said.
On the refugee side, the frustration was palpable. “The situation in the camp is terrible in every possible way,” said Zeineddine, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Syria who was living in Koutsochero camp at the same time as the Greek flood victims last year. “We waited two months for doctors.” Contact with the Greeks, he added, was not permitted. “A security car turns us back. They’re on their own and so are we.”
Farkadona’s story fits a longer local pattern. In the 1990s, about 250 Pontic Greek families — many from Georgia, Armenia, and other former Soviet republics — were resettled here. Promised permanent homes, they spent years in “temporary” container housing. Some of those homes became permanent, with an unfinished housing development still standing on the edge of town.
The development project was meant to replace the containers. By 2014, 93 small housing units had been built there at a cost of €3.8 million. But basic works like sewage and electricity were never completed, and the houses stood empty. In 2019, an additional nearly half a million euros (€478,500) was spent to finish them — yet no one ever moved in.
In May 2025, the governor of Thessaly, Dimitris Kouretas, announced that 30 of the long-idle houses would finally be allocated to families, while the remaining ones would go to flood-affected residents. Kouretas said new funding had been secured for the maintenance of the houses. During a visit to the settlement, Solomon documented signs of neglect and deterioration after years of standing empty.
The Region of Thessaly did not respond to Solomon’s questions regarding the maintenance plans, costs, or the relocation timeline for the flood-affected residents. However, the mayor of Farkadona confirmed Koureta’s statements, saying that an agreement had been reached with the Region and the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection to complete the houses so that families could finally move in.
Separately, a set of 28 prefabricated container units were delivered to Farkadona after the 2023 floods, backed by a €611,196 infrastructure project. The containers were installed in the same area as those used for earthquake victims in 2021, some of whom are still living there years later.
Yet two years after Storm Daniel, all 93 small houses and 28 containers remain empty, while families are still living in Koutsochero camp.
Greece has spent at least €4.7 million on these projects in a single municipality. Yet families continue to live in the camp and in containers, with no long-term housing plan from the state.
Farkadona’s mayor, Spyros Agnantis, downplayed the urgency, telling Solomon: “The few people living in Koutsochero want to remain there… They have water, food, electricity, and medical care within the facility.”
But for residents like Annoula Valiakou, what matters most is being close to home. She said she would gladly leave Koutsochero and move into the new containers being installed in Farkadona — just to be back on her “home ground,” where she says she belongs.
In Farkadona, residents say the state disappeared, even as floodwaters lingered. Back in September 2023, when helicopters flew overhead but little help reached the ground, 69-year-old Dimitrios Breziotis — a cook from the region who lost his home in the floods — summed up the mood: “They’ve left us to God’s mercy.” It wasn’t the state that stood by them, he said, but neighbors, associations, strangers with boats.
Two years on, that sentiment still echoes. “They’ve been absent. The state has been absent,” said Xanthos Natsinas, a taverna owner.
During a visit to flood-stricken areas in 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised that “whatever we lost, we will rebuild together — the state and the citizens.” The government announced emergency compensation for households and farmers, with responsibilities divided between Athens and Thessaly’s regional and local authorities.
But residents say procedures have been slow and opaque, and that payments cover only a fraction of what was lost.
“We fixed the doors, the windows, only what was necessary, since we haven’t gotten the money yet. We’re waiting,” said Eleni Fasoula, 66. She spent a year in Koutsochero with her husband and her elderly mother-in-law after floods gutted their home in Farkadona.
Flood victims were entitled to a €6,600 subsidy to replace essentials and could apply for housing support — a combination of state aid (80%) and an interest-free loan (20%) guaranteed by the Greek government – covering up to 150 square meters of a home.
“What can you do with that? What can you really do?” said Athina Balafa, another flood victim and a member of the Farkadona flood-victims’ committee. “Everything you have in your house, [you get] €6,600 — that’s it. For washing machines, a kitchen, beds, curtains, blankets… kitchenware, a fridge.”
Her sister has been hosting her and her family in nearby Trikala for two years. “And we’re going on to the third,” she added.
Government payments to rebuild homes and businesses have lagged for months, leaving many families unable to return to normalcy.
The government’s presence during the disaster was fleeting, residents said, but its absence in preparing for the next one is even more striking. “Prevention is the most important thing — not only for floods, but for earthquakes, for fires, for all of it,” said Natsinas, the taverna owner who is also a member of the local flood-victims’ committee.
Frustrated by inaction, the committee drafted its own list of demands: reinforcing embankments, flood-proofing farmland, restoring public infrastructure, and ensuring transparency in how compensation is calculated. But progress has been slow, Natsinas said.
Across Thessaly, officials have warned that meaningful flood protection would cost billions. One recent estimate put the price tag at around €3 billion, yet much of the available funding has yet to be released by national authorities, and little of the work has begun.
Solomon reached out to the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection for comment on the funding and ongoing works but did not receive a response.
Farkadona is not an anomaly. What happened here is part of a broader reality: across Greece, climate disasters and migration pressures are colliding in the same places, sometimes forcing infrastructure built for one crisis to be repurposed for another.
This summer, Crete embodied the same convergence. In July, wildfires forced the evacuation of more than 5,000 residents and tourists, overwhelming local emergency services at the height of the tourist season. At the same time, arrivals from Libya surged. According to the legal-aid group Refugee Support Aegean, more than 7,300 people landed on Crete and nearby Gavdos in the first half of 2025 alone — surpassing the total for all of last year.
The government responded by suspending asylum applications for new arrivals from North Africa, citing pressure on reception systems, and later passed a law imposing prison terms for rejected asylum seekers. Rumors spread in Farkadona that Greek flood victims would be forced out of Koutsochero to make room for detainees.
“Climate migrants are not a future issue — they are the human face of today’s climate crisis,” said Kostas Vlachopoulos, a researcher with the Greek Council for Refugees. “As the frontline of Europe, Greece must lead in shaping a humane, rights-based response that protects people, not just borders, before displacement becomes a humanitarian disaster.” The advocacy and legal organization recently co-authored a report with WWF Greece urging action on climate-induced migration.
Greece’s history is one of repeated movements of people, in and out, a story where nearly everyone knows someone or has a descendant who was forced to leave or return. What once pushed people abroad — conflict, economic hardship — is now joined by another force: climate extremes.
Between 2008 and 2023, Greece recorded more than 213,000 internal displacements as a result of floods, wildfires, and storms — the highest figure among EU member states, according to data published by the European Environment Agency.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) recorded over 21,000 internal displacements in Greece due to Storm Daniel in 2023 — referring to instances where people were forced to move, sometimes multiple times, because of the disaster.
Globally, disasters triggered 26.4 million new internal displacements worldwide — the vast majority linked to floods and storms, according to the IDMC.
Scientists are increasingly able to quantify how climate change amplifies these disasters. A 2025 study by the World Weather Attribution group found that the conditions fueling deadly wildfires in Greece, Türkiye and Cyprus were about ten times more likely because of human-caused climate change, and some analyses suggest they were roughly 20 percent more intense than they would otherwise have been.
The same vulnerabilities extend across the Mediterranean. As part of this cross-border story, Solomon partnered with Italy’s Meridio News, which examined how migration and climate emergencies intersect in Sicily — another southern European region long shaped by migration and now facing new forms of displacement. There, wildfires, floods, and extreme heat are forcing residents to flee their homes, while authorities remain trapped in a reactive, emergency approach. Environmental groups warn that, as in Greece, inadequate urban planning and weak governance are compounding the effects of climate change, leaving people unprotected against the next disaster.
Looking ahead, the scale of climate displacement could grow dramatically. World Bank projections suggest that up to five million people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia may be forced to move within their own countries by 2050 under worst-case climate scenarios. The projections are speculative, but the message from scientists is clear: Southern Europe — from the Greek plains to the Italian islands — is among the regions most exposed to heat, drought, flooding and fire.
“Without substantial investment in nature-based resilience and the establishment of an effective ecosystem management system, Greece will be unable to withstand the mounting pressures of the climate crisis,” Theodota Nantsou, head of policy at the environmental advocacy group WWF Greece, told Solomon. She warned that with the country’s economy already strained, the growing frequency of disasters like Storm Daniel and the massive wildfires risks triggering not only ecological damage but also economic collapse and social disruption.
For villages like Farkadona, that exposure has consequences beyond destroyed homes and farmland. It reshapes daily life, alters who stays and who leaves, and accelerates trends that were already hollowing out the countryside.
On a recent Saturday, the farmers’ market in Farkadona stretched around the central square, but the rows of stalls were thinner than before the floods. Many vendors had left, and the customers were fewer too. Farmer Vaios Rountos, who has been selling his produce here for some 20 years, stood at his stall of watermelons and cantaloupes, a faded cap embroidered with the Greek flag shading his face. “Once upon a time, you earned a living here. There was work,” he said. “Now, it couldn’t be worse. Damn poverty fell upon us.”
“Farkadona is gone, finished. Life is not what it used to be,” said Urania Vasiliou, 52, who owns a gas station on the edge of town.
According to the 2021 census, the community of Farkadona had 1,829 residents. Today, after the destruction that followed, locals say no more than 800 people remain in the village. Their neighbors, they say, have relocated to nearby villages, to Trikala or Larissa, where rents spiked in the aftermath of the floods — or farther away to Athens and Thessaloniki, or even abroad. The mayor told Solomon that the authorities have no official figures.
The government’s patchy response is only part of the story. The deeper challenge, experts warn, is demographic. Such disasters, said Byron Kotzamanis, a demographer at the University of Thessaly, act as “accelerators” of long-standing decline in regions like Thessaly, where populations are already aging and shrinking. And Greece as a whole is ill-prepared: unplanned development and weak infrastructure leave entire regions unable to withstand repeated shocks, pushing more people to move.
For small business owners, the collapse has been devastating.
“Now there are far fewer people — and most are poorer,” said Balafa, who ran a fitness and nutrition business with her husband in Farkadona before the floods. “There is no liquidity, no way for the market to move. How is the economy supposed to recover?”
Across Thessaly, stories like hers have multiplied — families scattered, businesses shuttered, villages hollowed out. Those who remain face a quieter struggle: not only to rebuild their homes, but to reclaim their place in the landscape they once called their own.
Two years after Storm Daniel, Annoula Valiakou is still living in the reception center in Koutsochero — one of about 30 villagers who remained there as of September 2025. A greengrocer idles outside the camp with his van until dusk. At night, Valiakou works cleaning shifts at a hospital; by day, she returns to her container, waiting for the chance to go back home.
Rebuilding has been slow and uncertain, leaving her in limbo. Though she has received state compensation, it was not enough to cover the damage to her home, which she is gradually repairing. She says she has no complaints about the state’s help so far — she has shelter, food is provided daily, and displaced residents can stay as long as they need. When asked if she feels like a climate refugee, Valiakou brushes off the comparison: “I don’t feel that… It was a disaster. It happened, it’s over, we turn the page. We move on.”
For her, as for countless people who have passed through before her, the camp has become a place of waiting. “I hope I can leave soon,” she told Solomon last month.
For others in Farkadona, the experience has blurred familiar boundaries. “They’re migrants in their own land,” said Natsinas. “These people didn’t go there by choice. They were decent, hardworking families. They needed to go because they had no homes to stay in.”
He recalled how his uncle once left for America, other relatives for Germany or Australia — and his fellow villagers who departed in search of survival and a better life. Today, he sees the same in Syrians, Afghans, and Libyans arriving on Greek shores — people fleeing greater disaster and danger, often mistreated and told to leave the very day they arrive.
“We call people lathrometanastes,” he said, using the Greek word that literally means “false migrants.”
“But is there such a thing as a false person on this planet? There is no such thing as an illegal person.”
He paused. “Is there any social care for the vulnerable [migrants]? None. And for us there isn’t either.”
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe, as part of the cross-border series “From landing points to departure lands: how the refugee and climate crises collide in Greece and Italy.” Stefania D’Ignoti contributed reporting to the series from Sicily. Iliana Papangeli, Iason Athanasiadis and Florian Schmitz contributed reporting to this story from Thessaly.
Featured image: In flood-stricken Farkadona, a man in his 70s, left houseless by Storm Daniel, waits by the roadside with his belongings, hoping to hitch a ride to the next village. Photo by Iason Athanasiadis. September 2023.
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