Lesbos had become the unlikely center of the Greek island's refugee issue in August 2015. Aeolian Sun travel agency owner Maria Papageorgiou said that people were sleeping outside her shop. She claimed that these people had no water to drink or to wash themselves with.
Papageorgiou stated that she remained emotionally shocked by the disaster that engulfed the area overnight. From her window, she saw the Coast Guard dumping body bags of the drowned. The shop owner even said that she felt that she was in Syria personally and that it was like a war zone.
Lesbos residents organized a heroic humanitarian project to support the refugees. In fact, an 85-year-old grandmother who fed people on the beach and a local fisherman who saved scores of refugees from the water had been nominated for a Nobel peace prize as representatives of the island's collective effort. Then in September, the United Nations and the Non Government Organizations came in and began dealing with the situation, according to a report from The Guardian.
The Lesbos locality welcomed around 30,000 refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan this February alone. The number in actuality is equivalent to the whole population of Mytilene. In the weekend, an EU deal with Turkey was orchestrated to close the path by which a million people travelled the Aegean Sea to Greece in 2015. After which thousands more arrived on the island, despite forced removal warnings. At the same time, hundreds tried to vacate the island for Athens in a last attempt to arrive in northern Europe.
Lesbos' tourist-dependent economy was offset by the accommodations of both refugees and international aid. The crisis had transformed the island, but opinion on how, and whether, it will recover was still divided. The island's tourist-dependent economy had already been stretched by a government debt crisis, according to a feature from the Independent.
