32 killed in train collision in Greece
2023.03.01 03:53
32 killed in train collision in Greece
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – The fire department in Greece reported that late on Tuesday night, two trains collided head-on, killing at least 32 people and injuring 85 others. However, the cause of the most fatal rail accident in Greece in decades remained a mystery.
The governor of the Thessaly region reported that a cargo train outside the city of Larissa in central Greece collided with an intercity passenger train traveling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki at high speed.
A number of the passenger carriages caught fire as a result of the impact, burning many commuters who were rushed to hospitals.
Stergios Minenis, a 28-year-old passenger who jumped to safety from the wreckage, stated, “We heard a big bang, (it was) 10 nightmarish seconds.”
“We were turning over in the wagon until we fell on our sides…then there was panic, and there were fires everywhere in the cables. The fire started right away, and as we were turning over, we were burned, and there was fire left and right.”
Konstantinos Agorastos, governor of Thessaly, told SKAI TV that the crash resulted in the derailment of the first four carriages of the passenger train, while the first two carriages caught fire and were “almost completely destroyed.”
He claimed that on the same track, the two trains sped toward one another.
The governor stated, “They were traveling at great speed and one (driver) didn’t know the other was coming.”
Buses transported approximately 250 passengers safely to Thessaloniki. State broadcaster ERT reported that one passenger broke the train window with his suitcase to escape.
A young man who was taken to a bridge nearby was quoted by SKAI TV as saying, “There was panic in the carriage, people were screaming.”
Another passenger, Angelos Tsiamouras, told ERT that “it was like an earthquake.”
The footage that was shown by the broadcaster SKAI showed the road being littered with debris and derailed carriages with severely damaged windows and thick smoke plumes. In the carriages, rescue workers were seen searching for passengers who had become trapped with torches.
In a televised address, Vassilis Varthakogiannis, a spokesperson for the fire department, stated, “The evacuation of passengers is under way in very difficult conditions given the severity of the collision of the two trains.”
State broadcaster ERT captured rescue workers with headlights searching the wreckage and nearby fields for survivors in the early hours of Wednesday.
We are going through a terrible time. We are removing alive, injured, and deceased individuals. A volunteer rescue worker told ERT, a state broadcaster, “We are going to be here all night, until we finish, until we find the last person.”
The demolished trains were captured at dawn with one passenger carriage on its side, nearly 90 degrees from the rest of the train, and other derailed carriages tilted precariously. The passenger train was coming out of a tunnel when the crash occurred.
The passenger train, which left Athens at 7.30 p.m. (0530 GMT) according to local media, carried 350 passengers. The incident was discovered, according to the fire department, just before midnight on Tuesday. The cargo train was heading to Larissa from Thessaloniki.
When two trains collided head-on outside of Larissa in 1972, 19 people died.
Because many trains in Greece travel on single tracks and signaling and automatic control systems have not yet been installed in many places, the country’s aging railway system needs to be updated.
As part of its international bailout program, Greece sold rail operator TRAINOSE to Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 with the expectation that hundreds of millions of euros would be invested in rail infrastructure.
The Italian company operates 342 passenger and commercial routes per day and is the primary provider of rail transportation for passengers and freight in Greece, according to its website.
