Greek engineer, father of 3 killed, in Hague disaster “was in love with The Netherlands”
One of the six people found dead after an explosion led to the partial collapse of an apartment building in The Hague was identified by family members as Vikel Kamperai a civil engineer living in the Netherlands for over two years. The 44-year-old man from Greece leaves behind his wife and their three young children, a 7-month-old boy, a 6-year-old girl, and a 10-year-old boy. The loss of the affable, enthusiastic father who was so excited about building a life in the Netherlands has been devastating for friends and family, his wife, Maria Apostolakif, told NL Times on Tuesday.
“How could this have happened?” Apostolakif wondered as she broke down crying. She watched news of the disaster from their home near Athens after she learned that the explosions and the fire had happened on Tarwekamp in The Hague. She struggled because it seemed so random and absurd that the disaster was unfolding at the apartment block where her husband had been living since moving to the country.
“It was like watching a movie. It just wasn’t real,” she continued. All the while, the children were constantly asking "if their daddy is alive," and why they could not call him. Distraught, Apostolakif recounted how she felt helpless and did not know what to tell them. Her anguish was compounded by the sense she was being kept in the dark by Dutch authorities as the search efforts continued.
It took two and a half days for confirmation of Vikel Kamperai's death
The cause of the blasts and the fire are being treated as suspicious, and remain under investigation. The explosions were first reported at about 6:15 a.m. on Saturday, and firefighters worked for hours trying to battle back the flames as the building walls collapsed. Four people were rescued during the initial response, but concerns about the building’s structure delayed further search efforts.
Rescuers eventually found one more wounded victim. From the end of Saturday afternoon through early Monday morning, the bodies of six people were recovered, including two parents and their 17-year-old daughter. The girl's 8-year-old brother survived.
It was not until Monday evening that Apostolakif found out that her husband was no longer considered missing, and that he was one of the victims killed in the incident. He was identified after a family member provided a DNA sample to Dutch authorities investigating the disaster, she said.
Recruited for a job, Kamperai was very pleased about life in the Netherlands
Kamperai moved from Greece to the Netherlands in August 2022 a few months after he was contacted by a job recruiter. The civil engineer was excited about the possibility of building a better life for his family from The Hague, after a difficult time during Greece’s economic crisis and then the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were thinking about all of us together moving out there for a better life, better schools, and because there isn’t really any violence. And yet we have lived in Greece for so many years, and nothing happened. It’s ironic,” she said, before pausing to regain her composure.
The two met more than two decades ago at university. Her husband was a dual Greek and Albanian citizen, who was living in Greece from the age of seven right up until he moved to The Hague. Maria was born in Germany to Greek parents and has also lived in Greece since she was a child.
“He was in love with the Netherlands. He liked it all, everything about it,” she said. “He was trying to persuade me to move there, but for some reason, I did not want to go.” She is not religious and does not believe in fate, but her instincts said it did not feel right to move out there.
"I just want to know the truth," she says
She took time to speak on the phone in the hope that it might help for people and investigators to know that her husband was a good man, and that he never did anything to justify such a violent and tragic death. She implored that people "spend as much time with family as possible, because everything can be lost in a moment."
She understands that she will have to continue her life as a single mother, and she is trying to remain supportive for her children even though the situation is so sudden and shattering for them. “May justice prevail, and we will learn who did this to our family,” she wrote in an earlier email.
A criminal investigation is still ongoing to determine what caused the explosions and the fire. Authorities have been working to determine any connection between the violence and a suspicious vehicle that raced off from the scene on Saturday.
Despite this, Maria says, “I don’t have any hate for anyone. I just want to know the truth. My children deserve to know what happened to their father.”
