The error of the station manager caused the biggest railway tragedy in Greece

The worst railway tragedy in Europe since the Angrois accident and the worst in the history of Greece. The Hellenic nation is living through three days of mourning after the collision of two trains — one passenger, with 354 people on board, and one freight — at around midnight on Tuesday, leaving an official toll of 43 dead and 57 hospitalized wounded.

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— Mr. Goudaras (@GGoudaras) March 1, 2023

The final number of victims it is feared that he is over 50 years old when the rescue tasks were completed in the first two passenger cars, destroyed in a frontal impact – at a speed of 160 km/h – and engulfed in flames. “We will have at least 15 more deaths,” a police spokesman said on Wednesday. Vasilis Lambropoulosto the program Live news from the Greek chain Mega. Other media talk about as many as 50 missing. The cause points to human error by the head of the Larissa station, closest to Tempe, the site of the crash, who has already been arrested.

The incident has already taken a political toll, which was not the case in the 2013 Alvija accident that killed 80 people. Kostas A. Karamanlis he submitted his resignation as Minister of Infrastructure and Transport to the head of the government, conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “That’s what I feel I have a duty to do as minimal show of respect in memory of the people who have gone so unjustly.

Karamanlis condemned the poor condition of the railway infrastructure, which “It doesn’t belong in the 21st century”, and took “responsibility for the eternal mistakes of the Greek state and political system”. A few hours later, Mitsotakis announced two more resignations, that of the head of the Hellenic Railway Organization (OSE) and Ergose, its subsidiary specializing in infrastructure projects.

confusion of iron

“Around 12:00 p.m. [una menos en España] We received a report and within seven minutes the first ambulance arrived and we quickly transferred the seriously injured,” he said. Giorgos Mathiopoulos, president of the emergency health service (EKAV) for the newspaper That Nea.

About 150 firefighters and dozens of sanitary units worked tirelessly during this Wednesday to remove the pile of iron in which the first two wagons were lowered and thus retrieve the bodies of the victims. “We are talking about an amorphous mass of iron”Sotiris Papamarkakis, director of the rescue team, told the daily Kathimerini. Due to the fire, the temperatures in these wagons reached up to 1500 degrees Celsius.

Local media describe gruesome scenes. “When we arrived it wasto the burning wagons and bloody people falling from the windowsMathiopoulos described.

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— List of you(Κώστας Î£Ï€Î±Î³Î³Î¿Ï Ï Î¿Ï‚) (@Listofyou2) March 1, 2023

What was most surprising was that most of the bodies found belonged to young people. “We felt like we were taking our kids out”he said in a state juice Yiannis Xanthopoulos, member of the Larissa rescue team. They were traveling on Intercity 62, which ran the Athens-Thessalonica night route college who returned to their places of residence to enjoy the festive bridge on the occasion of the beginning of the Orthodox Lent.

The moments of tension were when the relatives of the victims arrived at the scene, who made sure that none of their relatives were on the list of injured in the hospitals.. Pavlos Aslanidisfather of a 26-year-old young man, complained to the media about the little information he had received.

The identification process will be difficult and demanding DNA tests. Two hospitals in Larissa were put on alert to accommodate the 49 injured, six of whom are in intensive care. The other injured were transferred to three other centers. Many citizens signed up to donate blood.

The station manager admits he made a mistake when he gave way to two trains on the track

“I made a mistake”. These are the words spoken by the head of the Larissa station in his first statement to the police, according to Greek media. This one 59-year-old manresponsible for the management of the trains that operated on the section where the accident occurred, admitted that your mistake in wrongly yielding the right-of-way to a passenger train on the same track as the convoy goods, and attributed it to “bad timing”. However, some media point out that when he saw the mistake, he gave the order to change the Intercity lane, but the electronic signaling he didn’t listen.

The station manager was arrested as part of the investigation opened by the Larissa prosecutor’s office, which charges him with the crimes of involuntary manslaughter and dangerous obstruction of traffic. Two officials and the head of Hellenic Train were also questioned.

President of the Union of Railway Conductors of Greece, Costas Geridunias, on the channel ERT, condemned the state of deterioration of the railway infrastructure in the country. “Nothing works, everything is done by hand, we are in manual mode on the entire Athens-Thessalonica axis. The traffic lights don’t work either. If they were, the drivers would have seen the red lights and stopped in time,” he said. Because of this, the drivers are almost completely dependent on the information they receive from the heads of the relevant stations, he emphasized.

Added to this were the union’s complaints of lack of staff. “The state itself said that it should have 2,100 employees, but today only 750 are working in the whole of Greece,” said the president of the Union of Railway Workers, Nikos Tsikalakis.

Prime Minister Mitsotakis ignored infrastructure deficiencies and pointed out that the tragedy was caused by human error. Thus, he promised to clarify responsibility and form a special commission of experts that will examine the facts. «‘never again’ I heard from the families of the victims in Larissa will not remain on empty words“, he concluded.