20 years.........+ 1 day

It's been already 20 years and 1 day......... September 13 1986, a date that has been written in blacjk letters in the memory of the residents of Kalamata. Greece. An erthquake of magnitude 6.0 Richter (for some it was 6,2 or even 6,5) hit the city in the evening and resulted in 20 dead people and destroyed a big part of the city. The "fortunate" thing (if i can say that) was that at the same time, most of the people were at the city harbor, as it was a big celebration of the first ship travelling from Kalamata to the island of Crete, so there were not many people inside their appartments. What i remember very well is an appartment building near the river that was split in two parts. The left part was staying without damages, though the right part was destroyed! Very strange thing! The bad thing after the earthquake was that the winter was very cold that year and on March i saw my first snow! Imagine the people living in tents...

Where was i that night? I was 5,5 years old, getting ready to go to elementary school for the first time. What i remember is that i was at the 4th floor on the balcony of a 4-floor appartment building with some family friends, though my parents and my brother were at the harbor celebrating for the ship. Suddenly, i remember that everything was moving under my feet, my friend's mother was yelling at us to go with her, she took my hand and we walked fast down the stairs. When we went downstairs and out to the road, after a while i saw my father, who had came to see if we were ok (no mobile phones then!). After that what? Forseveral months we were living in our village, about 20-25 minutes away from Kalamata, because our appartment building was being repaired.

Anyway, now Kalamata is a very beautiful city and almost nothing reminds the city before the earthquake...