\n<\/p>\n
Every time I talk to Greeks who left the country during the 2009-2015 debt crisis and are thinking about coming back, I repeat the same warning, in the same monotone: \u201cIn Greece, we wake up every morning not knowing whether our day will be smooth. We deal with problems here that have long been sorted out in organized Western societies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The recent rain is a good example, or, more rarely, when it snows. At around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, cellphones across Attica sounded with an alarm from the 112 civil protection hotline warning of terrible storms. Outside the window, a light, almost romantic drizzle was falling \u2013 of the kind that would hardly merit an umbrella in London, where a few stray drops of rain are a regular occurrence.<\/p>\n
What compels the Civil Protection Agency to shoot off warnings agogo at the first hint of rain or snow? Why do our cellphones scream at us every time the sky isn\u2019t a sparkling, cloudless blue? Why has the state decided that there is nothing to be done about the country\u2019s infrastructure apart from keeping citizens indoors? Shutting down schools, advising people to work from home and canceling events is the fallback for the authorities\u2019 fear of responsibility and accountability. \u201cI\u2019ll just fire off a message to be on the safe side. Better safe than sorry.\u201d And then, in the event of fatalities or damages, the blame can be passed on to the citizen: \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault,\u201d responds the state. \u201cI told you to stay put.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most outrageous thing, however, is that we take the state\u2019s inefficiency for granted. The directive, \u201cavoid all unnecessary travel,\u201d has come to be seen as something normal, as a normal response to the failure to clean storm drains, to prevent streams from becoming rubbish tips and houses being built on natural waterways, to carry out flood-protection work and to ensure that all the necessary state services are at citizens\u2019 disposal. No one reacts anymore. Rather than becoming trapped in our cars on a highway because of snow or struggling against knee-deep water trying to cross a street, we just stay home.<\/p>\n
The problem is that extreme weather will simply become more frequent as climate change deepens \u2013 and the solution cannot continue to be messages from 112 and a \u201cRupunzel\u201d policy: keeping people locked up in the safe castles.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n