Nearly two weeks later, it continues to broadcast live reports from Greece twice a day, as well as hourly requests for donations. To date, contributions total about $23,000.
"They're facing some serious problems right now," said Kotrotsios, 31, the station's general manager, "and now it's still summer in Greece. Consider a month from now when it's cold, rain, even snow."
The station's listeners have good reason to be interested in the news broadcasts, the interviews, the public service announcements and the musical dedications for and about Kalamata. Most are Greek-Americans, eager for news of home or worried about the fate of relatives.
Kotrotsios estimates that 110,000 Greeks live within 50 miles of Philadelphia. The station also is heard in Maryland and Connecticut. In addition, a satellite dish can pull in the signal "anywhere in the United States and Canada," he said.
Several days ago, the station decided to broaden its appeal for assistance, distributing flyers outside the tightly knit Greek community. Station officials reasoned that wide media coverage of an earthquake in Italy several years ago resulted in widespread assistance.
"Are we avoiding the situation?" Kotrotsios asked, noting how little media attention the Greek quake has attracted. "Are we closing our ears?"
He went on to recite Kalamata's disaster statistics: Three-quarters of the city leveled, with 30,000 to 35,000 people homeless, 20 dead, hundreds seriously injured, all the major buildings damaged.
"The people are living outside in the fields, in tents," said Peggy Mylonas, president of the Peloponnesian Society of Philadelphia and a recent guest on the radio station. "The army is feeding them. Even the church services are taking place outside."
By a stroke of good fortune, the city averted even greater disaster, she said. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were at the seashore the night of the first quake, celebrating the inauguration of a new boat line between Kalamata and Crete.
"People were lucky they were not in their houses," Mylonas said.
Before the earthquake, Kotrotsios said, Kalamata was a fishing community as well as an exporter of olives, olive oil and "the famous figs of Kalamata."
On Wednesday, the station's listeners heard the mayor of Kalamata, interviewed by a Greek correspondent, thank "the Greeks abroad" for "their care and help."
Listening to a replay of the tape, Kotrotsios nodded and then spoke about the importance of his listeners' link with their past - embodied in news from home, in announcements of local Greek festivals, in the music of the station's 5,000-album collection.
The station's mission, he said, is "to help people to preserve the language and the great Greek customs, the history and all that . . . but also to help people get adjusted in this new world, because it is a world of opportunity and freedom."
