Greece holiday nightmare as island left without power for DAYS cutting off WATER

Visitors to the popular Greek destination island have been stuck since the power outage struck on Sunday night, leaving many without electricity and water. 

The outage comes at the peak of the Greek tourism season, which sees thousands flock to the island, which is around a one-hour ferry ride from the city of Athens.  

Authorities on Monday confirmed that repairs were being undertaken to rectify the problem, but tourists have been stuck on the island without access to amenities. 

Cash machines and road signals are not working, while mini-markets, restaurants and ice-cream shops on the island have seen their stock destroyed from a lack of cooling facilities.

Telecommunications on the island are also limited while the outage is rectified.  

The Mayor of Hydra, George Koukoudakis, said its water supply system had been badly affected as many of its pumps rely on electricity. 

Electricity is delivered to the island from mainland Greece via two undersea cables. 

An official at Greece’s Public Power Corp (PPC) confirmed that damage had been detected in one of the cables supplying power. 

However, the second of the two cables also failed, although no damage had been detected in the second supply cable.  

Mr Koukoudakis told Reuters: “We are not able to measure the impact yet but as the island is full of visitors this gives a bad impression.” 

Nikos Sofianos, who owns a hotel on the island, said the economic impact was huge and several visitors left on Monday morning. 

Mr Sofianos said: “Our hotel is fully booked, but our customers are not able to use toilets or take a shower,” Sofianos said. 

Tourism is one of Greece’s main sources of revenue, driving a tentative economic recovery after a long crisis.  

The country, which hads an estimated population of around 11 million attracted over 27 million tourists in 2017. 

Despite the power outage, Greek authorities expects a record 32 million visitors to the country this year. 

Last week, Greek diplomat Dimitris Caramitsos-Tziras issued a stern warning to the UK claiming there would be serious economic consequences for both Britain and Greece in the event of a no deal.

He suggested a failure to reach agreement with the EU could impact vitally important British-Greek tourism.