An investigation was opened to find out the origins of the collision which left at least 38 dead on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. The unions denounce the lack of maintenance and the absence of high -performance safety systems.
by Marina Rafenberg (Athens, Correspondence)
It is the “worst rail disaster that the country has ever known”, according to the Greek media. On the night of Tuesday, February 28 to Wednesday 1 er March, the collision of two trains circulating on the same path in the opposite direction near the city of Larissa, in the center of Greece, made the minus 38 deaths and 85 injured.
If the emotion was still lively Wednesday – three days of national mourning were decreed by the Prime Minister -, the circumstances of the accident question. Some see it as the result of the dilapidation of a rail network abandoned for decades, especially after the economic crisis (2010-2018) and the austerity measures which led, in 2017, to the acquisition of the Greek company Iron (Cream) by the Italian Italian company Ferrovie dello stato Italiane (FS).
In tears, the features drawn, the survivors interviewed by the Greek media on Wednesday in the morning, said “shocked”, but also angry – the Greek railway company, renamed Hellenic Train, did not have a word Excuse the same evening, and was slow to publish a press release. Above all, they denounce a delay and recurrent failures on this train line which links Athens to the second city in the country, Thessaloniki.
On the television channel Mega, a passenger finds that he “felt that something was wrong when the train stopped suddenly”. “The driver told us that we would only be delayed fifteen minutes, because it is a one-way way. We should probably have been stopped more …”, he plague. On the television channel Ert, another young man claims to have heard “the controller say:” Let’s go and God only knows where it will take us. “When you hear this kind of speech, you are not really reassured”, he added.
The Minister of Transport presented his resignation
No details have so far been provided on the reasons why two trains in the opposite direction circulated on the same path at the same time. An investigation was opened and the Larissa station manager was arrested and continued in particular for “negligence homicides” and “involuntary bodily injuries”. It must be heard by justice Thursday March 2.
Visit Wednesday on the scene of the drama, in the Valley of Tempe, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who spoke of a “tragic human error”, promised that his government was going to “discover the causes” of the accident and “do everything so that such a thing never happens again”.
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