A mammoth search-and-rescue operation for a British woman last seen lounging on a sunbed in Greece has intensified days after her “mysterious” disappearance.
The Hellenic coastguard, backed by a flotilla of pleasure craft and fishing boats, has fanned across the waters off Ofrynio beach near the northern town of Kavala, where Michele Bourda, 59, went missing on 1 August.
“The search is very much on, with a patrol vessel and other recreational boats out scouring the seas all along the Strymonian Gulf,” said a coastguard official. “Three days may have elapsed, but there are no plans to call off the operation yet.”
While vessels combed the sea on Monday, police also continued an extensive search on land, authorities said.
Bourda, described as a “temporary resident” of Serres in northern Greece, was reported missing by her Greek husband on Friday after he awoke from a nap on a sunbed to find his wife had vanished from the adjacent lounger, though her belongings were still there.
When authorities failed to find Bourda, LifeLine Hellas, a Greek missing persons charity, issued a silver alert – often activated when missing people are suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia – prompting a large-scale and coordinated search by rescue services.
In its appeal for help, the charity described Bourda as about 5ft 6in tall and of slim build. “On the day she went missing, she was wearing a swimsuit with decorative stones, yellow water shoes, and red plastic sunglasses. Her life is in danger,” it said. The British embassy in Athens issued a similar statement.
As Monday drew to a close, Greek officials said that no decision had yet been made about whether or not to continue the search-and-rescue operation on Tuesday.
“Hope dies last,” said one. “Any scenario would be guessing at this point, and it is too early to make any decision.”
Even if the coastguard operation was brought to a halt, the search would continue on land, and regular patrol boats would still comb the seas as part of their daily activities.
Bourda is not the first Briton to go missing in Greece this summer. Last month, another silver alert was activated after the family of 60-year-old Jay Arnold notified police that he had vanished while holidaying on the southern Aegean isle of Karpathos.
Arnold, who was staying in the village of Olympos in the north of the island, was last seen by a local woman from whom he had been renting accommodation. Police were alerted when he failed to check out of his room on the day he was due to leave. Though his rented car was found parked and locked, authorities have since described the search for him as “going cold”.
“We’ve had dogs brought in, drones, specially trained police and volunteers out there looking and we’ve found nothing,” local police officer Panayiotis Fotopoulos said. “It’s very odd, a total mystery, that absolutely nothing should be found after so many weeks. We’re not ruling out that perhaps he fell into the sea.”
Last June, the celebrity doctor and TV presenter Michael Mosley was found dead five days after he went missing on the remote Greek island of Symi. An inquest determined he had likely died as a result of accidental heatstroke after getting lost as he attempted to return from the beach to his lodgings.
With its crystal clear blue waters and golden sands, Ofrynio beach is among the most picturesque places in northern Greece, which, like the rest of the country, has been hit by record temperatures in recent weeks.
