A navy officer yesterday recounted how an order from his commander only minutes before a July 11 naval base munitions blast that killed 13 people had saved his life.

Testifying at an inquiry, the navy’s deputy commander Kyriacos Pohanis, said he had been asked to report urgently that morning because of a fire on the stack of 98 containers of Iranian munitions confiscated in 2009 because they violated UN sanctions.

He joined navy commander Andreas Ioannides who was at an elevated guard post atop a slope observing the fire. “It was hell,” Pohanis said. “It was something like a huge flamethrower.”

Pohanis said Ioannides asked him to go to the operations room to coordinate the firefighting helicopters, which had been notified. “I don’t think the fire service will be able to approach; we’ll have a problem if the fire spreads,” Ioannides said, according to Pohanis. Before joining Ioannides, Pohanis said he had seen a fire service engine and the base’s fire engine at the entrance.

A second fire service engine was inside the base, idling near the stack but seemed unable to approach, Pohanis said. He went to the operations room and called the National Guard HQ. This happened within seven minutes from the moment he received the order from Ioannides. “Before I got to my office ... I heard the explosion. There was a terrible earthquake,” he said.
The blast killed Ioannides, six other sailors and six firefighters.

Pohanis admitted he would not be alive today if Ioannides had not asked him to leave the area. He said he did not know if the helicopters had taken off or whether the firemen had started fighting the blaze prior to the blast. He said they had no contact with the firefighters. Asked if the navy knew of the contents of the containers, Pohanis said the only thing they were told when the cargo arrived in February 2009 was that it was “material of high national importance.”

He said any other information came from the media.

Pohanis said the navy arranged the security measures, which were geared towards preventing sabotage, theft and intelligence gathering by foreign elements. He said the navy had no access to the cargo and his impression was that storing it at the base would be temporary. “I only realised something was wrong on July 4 (2011),” Pohanis said, when he was told one of the containers had bulged. Pohanis said he was asked to prepare a room for a meeting two days later – when army officers, the fire service and others, arrived to inspect the container.

Pohanis, Ioannides and base commander Lambros Lambrou did not take part in the meeting.