“The girl we were with stands up, falls down fainting and starts convulsing like she’s having an epileptic fit”
The 55-year-old, who was poisoned like his wife and twelve other people by carbon monoxide that they inhaled at the hotel in Limnohori, Florina, is still being treated in the intensive care unit of the “Mamatseio” Hospital in Kozani, with the doctors, however, being more optimistic, since he passed first critical 48 years.
It all seems to have started with poor workmanship in the gas boiler, as the exhaust gas outlet appears to be very close to the room ventilation installation, through which the carbon monoxide passed, causing the occupants to pass out. At the same time, the information makes a sensation, that 10 days ago a couple with similar symptoms from the same hotel had been hospitalized at the “Bodosakeio” Hospital of Ptolemaida.
At the same time, the testimonies of the people who lived through the nightmare and – fortunately – avoided the worst are shocking. “I thought I had some kind of poisoning. Then, once I calm down, I go back into the room and go back to sleep. As I lay there, I suddenly hear people falling from the adjacent rooms. I feel like I’m going to fall down. The girl we were with also gets up, stands up, falls down fainting and begins convulsing as if she has had an epileptic seizure,” says one of the hotel’s customers.
Against this backdrop, the hotel’s customers began to look for help. The hospital was on war alert, with cases being treated, admitted to the ICU and transferred to other hospitals on a case-by-case basis. It was the preparedness and luck of the customers that prevented the worst, since everyone believed that they had suffered some kind of food poisoning.
“In other words, we really went through very difficult times and luckily we acted quickly and were saved. I decided to call EKAV, because I believed, my child, that we were poisoned by food”, said a customer of the hotel. Another tenant of the hotel described to Mega how the first symptoms appeared, while he said that there was no strange smell in the room.
“I was one of the lucky ones who couldn’t fall asleep, so I understood the symptoms in time. At 11:00 we went to sleep, at some point I began to have the first symptoms, bloating and a strong palpitation, which I attributed to some indigestion or poisoning. My wife said she had a headache and began to faint. He got up to go to the bathroom, passed out, threw up and that’s what made me call 911. As soon as I got up the room turned, I couldn’t even think, I had difficulty even calling 166,” he said.
At the same time, a relative of the hotel manager will say that the 53-year-old hotel manager who was released, is in agony. “He is in good health. Psychologically it sucks, because the primary thing is the person who is in the hospital. As a business we will see them, we will find them. We unfortunately can’t learn anything, they don’t tell us, while we have people on board, but unfortunately no one knows. They don’t tell us, that’s what we care about more than anything,” he said.
In fact, he wanted to deny the information that the hotel was open irregularly, saying: “Now this investment is going wrong. On the other hand, it is natural, something tragic also happened. On the other hand, this investment has indeed been made over there and is being thrown from everywhere now. The unit was closed, because the opening ceremony took place, and as a matter of fact, because the tavern wanted to function, they had to take care of the tavern as well.”
According to information, however, the EOT had imposed a fine, because the hotel owner had not made a statement of notification of the operation of a unit of health interest, did not have an updated operating license and was allegedly notifying the operating licenses, which he then canceled.
