Greek government promises check on train crash, number of victims growing
2023.03.02 12:24
Greek government promises check on train crash, number of victims growing
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – Greece’s deadliest train accident was expected to kill more people, with 46 confirmed dead and ten still missing, officials said on Thursday.
The government promised to do everything in its power to prevent another collision between two trains on the same track, which sparked outrage across the nation.
When a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board and a freight train collided late on Tuesday near the city of Larissa, several carriages were thrown off the tracks, two of which were completely destroyed. Other carriages were engulfed in flames.
At a news conference, government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou stated, “We are all devastated by this tragic incident.”
“The loss and trauma that this caused, the physical and mental trauma of survivors, and the angst of this country are enormous, and it is difficult to manage, especially now.”
Rescue workers continued to search charred and buckled rail carriages for additional victims as Greeks demanded answers.
On the crash site, 140 miles (230 kilometers) north of Athens, rescuer Konstantinos Imanimidis, 40, told Reuters, “The most difficult moment is this one, where instead of saving lives we have to recover bodies.”
“Nobody can survive in the carriages at temperatures greater than 1,200 degrees.”
Two brothers were crying nearby; 33-year-old Sokratis Bozos explained that they had come to the crash site to find out more about their father because the hospital had not told them if his body had been recovered.
At a hospital in Larissa, relatives, including the Bozos brothers, were required to provide DNA samples in order to identify some of the victims, which caused some people’s disbelief to turn into anger.
Outside the hospital, one relative yelled, “Some bastard has to pay for this.”
After a long holiday weekend, many of the victims were university students returning home. Numerous people were hurt.
On Wednesday evening, protesters in Athens hurled rocks at the offices of the train company before being dispersed by riot police using tear gas. In addition, protests broke out in Thessaloniki.
In addition, during a day of strike action on Thursday, trains were brought to a halt in protest of what the unions claimed was the failure of previous administrations to heed repeated requests to raise safety standards.
A thorough investigation was promised by the government. Oikonomou stated that authorities would investigate the accident’s causes and “chronic delays” in rail project implementation.
He stated, “These delays are rooted in chronic ills of the Greek public (sector), to distortions that go back decades,” and that the government had attempted to address the issue but “did not manage to eradicate it.”
The accident led Kostas Karamanlis, Minister of Transport, to resign. Giorgos Gerapetritis, who will take over on Thursday, said that he would be doing a crash investigation and updating the ailing railway system.
On Thursday, the arrested station master of the Larissa train station appeared before a local magistrate. Oikonomou stated that the man, who has not publicly acknowledged his guilt, had admitted to being negligent.
A retired train driver trainer named Nikos Tsouridis stated that human error did not fully explain what transpired.
He stated, “The station master acknowledged he made a mistake, but surely there should be a safety mechanism to fall back on.”
Greece sold TRAINOSE to Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 as part of its international bailout program, anticipating that hundreds of millions of euros would be invested in rail infrastructure in the coming years.
Passengers and freight are handled by the Italian operation, while infrastructure is handled by the Greek state-controlled OSE.
