The biggest railway tragedy in the history of Greece – and the worst in Europe in the last decade – has left at least 42 dead this Wednesday and has raised many questions about the errors that led to the frontal collision of two trains.
The incident occurred shortly before midnight local time (22:00 GMT), when two trains – a passenger train with 342 passengers and 10 railway employees and a freight train with two train drivers – collided north of Larisa, in central Greece.
At least 57 people remain hospitalized, six of them in intensive care. Many of the victims were young university students returning to Thessaloniki after a festive long weekend.
Authorities have asked relatives of the travelers to provide DNA evidence as many of the recovered bodies are in such poor condition that they cannot be otherwise identified.
Relatives of the young people who were traveling on the train have gone to the Larisa hospital with photographs because their relatives are neither among the dead nor among the injured.
There is also no official list of missing persons and while some Greek media point out that there could be dozens, others recall that many survivors made their own way to Thessaloniki without notifying it.
Images from the crash site show the violence of the crash, with the first wagons of both convoys turned into a mass of charred metal.
“The images that I saw as soon as I got off the wagon were incredible, tragic. I saw flames everywhere, pieces of metal from the wagons had melted and many people lost their lives. They did not have time to get out,” a passenger told the state agency. Greek AMNA.
“It was a train full of students, young people in their 20s,” Costas Bargiotas, a doctor at the Larissa hospital, told reporters. “It’s really shocking to see the wagons crumpled up like paper.”
“It’s a nightmare what I lived (…) I’m still shaking,” a passenger, Angelos, 22, told AFP at the scene of the accident. “We feel the collision like a big earthquake,” he added. “Luckily we were in the penultimate car and we came out alive.”
The Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Kostas Karamanlís, resigned acknowledging that his “efforts” to improve a railway infrastructure “that does not correspond to the 21st century” were not enough to prevent the accident.
The director general of the state-owned Greek Railway Agency (OSE), Hristos Vinis, on which the country’s railway infrastructure depends, including security systems, has also resigned.
Despite these resignations and the recognition of the poor situation of the infrastructures, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, pointed out in a message that “the tragedy, unfortunately, is due above all to human error.”
The conservative head of government declared three days of mourning and promised that “responsibilities will be cleared up” and a special commission of experts will be formed to investigate the facts.
The head of the Larissa station, the town not far from where the tragedy occurred, has been arrested and, according to the local press, he acknowledged that he made a mistake when the passenger train made a stop in Larissa and placed him in the same track on which the freight train was traveling in the opposite direction.
The 59-year-old man will appear before the prosecutor of this city this Thursday and according to the local press, he will be charged with involuntary manslaughter and other crimes that can carry sentences of 10 years in prison up to life in prison.
The president of the train drivers’ union, Kostas Geridunias, denounced on ERT public television the state of deterioration of the country’s railway infrastructure.
“Nothing works, everything is done manually, we are in manual mode on the entire Athens-Thessaloniki axis. Traffic lights don’t work either. If they did, drivers would see red lights and stop on time,” he said.
For these reasons, drivers depend almost entirely on the information they receive from the heads of the relevant stations, stressed Geridunias.
Some media had already pointed out that the electronic rail guidance system did not work, so staff were left to decide in some sections which track the trains should follow.
The experts also criticize that there was no automated system that alerted that two trains were moving towards a head-on collision on the same track.
Greece’s railways, Hellenic Train, are operated by the Italian state company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.
The passenger train covered the Athens-Thessaloniki route, while the commercial train, probably carrying sheet metal, covered the Thessaloniki-Athens route.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
