Hundreds of people are stranded without food or water for a third day in Greece after a devastating rainstorm killed at least six people and caused billions of euros of damage.
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Storm Daniel, which meteorologists said was the worst to hit the country since records began in 1930, has left a trail of devastation across Thessaly in central Greece.
Homes were carried away by torrents, vital infrastructure was destroyed and crops in the country's second-largest tract of farmland were wiped out.
"I don't think we have realised the magnitude of this disaster yet," disaster management expert Professor Efthymios Lekkas told state broadcaster ERT on Friday.
The three-day onslaught - in which, meteorologist George Tsatrafyllias said, one region got more rain in 24 hours than London does in an average year - followed a massive wildfire in northern Greece and the country's hottest summer on record.
Six people were killed and the number of missing was unclear.
Greek authorities mounted a massive rescue operation, deploying helicopters to winch people off rooftops, and inflatables.
Dozens of villages in the low-lying Thessaly region were submerged in water and local officials appealed for help via television stations.
"We need food and water," said Yiannis Koukas, mayor of the flooded village of Vlochos.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the crisis-hit area on Friday.
He cancelled a trip scheduled for Saturday to the northern city of Thessaloniki, where he was to deliver his annual keynote speech on the state of the economy.
Speaking to ERT, Thessaly governor Kostas Agorastos said he estimated the storm caused about three times the 700 million euros ($A1.2 billion) inflicted by extensive floods in 2020.
More than 1800 people had been rescued from flood-hit areas across Greece since Tuesday, the fire brigade said.
In the village of Vlochos near the city of Karditsa, about 150 people had been waiting for help for three days.
"We have been on the mountain," Dimitris, one of the stranded villagers, told Skai television.
"It's the third day without food, with nothing.
"We lit fires yesterday to cook whatever we managed to grab from our fridges."
In some areas, floodwater was still two metres deep.
One of the breadbaskets of Greece, Thessaly represents about 15 per cent of the country's annual agricultural output and is a major cotton-producing area.
Torrential rains left more than a metre of silt dumped on once-fertile soils.
"The agricultural production isn't destroyed just for this year," Lekkas said.
"The thick coat of silt means it is no longer fertile."
Australian Associated Press
