COSTAS KANTOURIS and DEREK GATOPOULOS,
Associated Press
March 2, 2023
March 2, 2023
1of14Cranes remove debris after a collision in Tempe, about 376 kilometres (235 miles) north of Athens, near Larissa city, Greece, Thursday, March 2, 2023. Emergency workers are searching for survivors and bodies after a passenger train and a freight train crashed head-on in Tempe, central Greece just before midnight Tuesday. It was the country's deadliest rail crash on record.Vaggelis Kousioras/APShow Mor
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THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Rescuers using cranes and heavy machinery on Thursday searched the wreckage of trains involved in a deadly collision that sent Greece into national mourning and prompted strikes and protests over rail safety. The death toll from Wednesday's head-on crash involving a passenger train and freight carrier remained at 43 as crews continue to check the burned out and twisted rail car remains for more bodies. More than 50 people remained hospitalized, most in the central Greek city of Larissa, some in serious condition. Railway workers' associations called strikes, halting national rail services and the subway in Athens, to protest working conditions and what they described as a lack of modernization of the Greek rail system.
Wednesday's collision occurred near the small town of Tempe in northern Greece, when a freight train loaded with heavy construction equipment smashed into a passenger service on Greece's busiest line between Athens and the country's second largest city, Thessaloniki. More than 300 people were on board the train, many of them students returning from a holiday weekend and annual Carnival celebrations around Greece.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Rescuers using cranes and heavy machinery on Thursday searched the wreckage of trains involved in a deadly collision that sent Greece into national mourning and prompted strikes and protests over rail safety. The death toll from Wednesday's head-on crash involving a passenger train and freight carrier remained at 43 as crews continue to check the burned out and twisted rail car remains for more bodies. More than 50 people remained hospitalized, most in the central Greek city of Larissa, some in serious condition. Railway workers' associations called strikes, halting national rail services and the subway in Athens, to protest working conditions and what they described as a lack of modernization of the Greek rail system.
Wednesday's collision occurred near the small town of Tempe in northern Greece, when a freight train loaded with heavy construction equipment smashed into a passenger service on Greece's busiest line between Athens and the country's second largest city, Thessaloniki. More than 300 people were on board the train, many of them students returning from a holiday weekend and annual Carnival celebrations around Greece.
As Greece reeled from its deadliest ever train disaster, Pope Francis and European leaders sent messages of sympathy. Among them were the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country is recovering from devastating earthquakes last month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent a message in Greek, writing “The people of Ukraine share the pain of the families of the victims. We wish a speedy recovery to all the injured.”
A stationmaster arrested following the rail disaster is due to appear in court Thursday as a judicial inquiry tries to establish why the two trains traveling in opposite directions were on the same track.
Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned following the crash, his replacement tasked with setting up an independent inquiry looking into the causes of the accident.
“Responsibility will be assigned,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address late Wednesday after visiting the scene of the collision. “We will work so that the words ‘never again’ ... will not remain an empty pledge. That I promise you.”
Rage explodes in Greece following devastating train collision
A 24 hour strike and clashes. Victims for now are 46
02 MARCH, 2023
(ANSAmed) - ATENE, 02 MAR - Rage has exploded in Greece following tuesday evening's train collision in the Vale of Tempe, near Larissa. The provisional death count has risen to 46 when 7 carbonized bodies were extracted from the train wreckage.
For the most part the victims are students who were returning to Thessaloniki after the orthodox Carnival. Thursday all train lines are not operating due to a 24 hour strike called by the Pan-Hellenic Train Federation (POS), while protesters clashed with the police in Athens in front of the headquarter of the Hellenic Train, the company that runs passenger and freight trains in Greece. Protests are also ongoing in Thessaloniki and in Larissa. A banner was placed outside the hospital where the wounded were taken, denouncing the deficiencies of the train system that will be covered in the inquiry.
"The lack of care shown over the years by the governments for the Greek train system is the caused this tragic event in the Vale of Tempe. Unfortunately, our continuous requests to hire new staff with a long-term contract, better training but especially the implementation of modern technology for security, were disregarded", states a press release by the POS Union.
The representative of the Fire Department, Giannis Artopioos, declared on public TV that the operation to extract the victims from the train wagons are taking place in very difficult conditions. (ANSAmed).
A 24 hour strike and clashes. Victims for now are 46
02 MARCH, 2023
(ANSAmed) - ATENE, 02 MAR - Rage has exploded in Greece following tuesday evening's train collision in the Vale of Tempe, near Larissa. The provisional death count has risen to 46 when 7 carbonized bodies were extracted from the train wreckage.
For the most part the victims are students who were returning to Thessaloniki after the orthodox Carnival. Thursday all train lines are not operating due to a 24 hour strike called by the Pan-Hellenic Train Federation (POS), while protesters clashed with the police in Athens in front of the headquarter of the Hellenic Train, the company that runs passenger and freight trains in Greece. Protests are also ongoing in Thessaloniki and in Larissa. A banner was placed outside the hospital where the wounded were taken, denouncing the deficiencies of the train system that will be covered in the inquiry.
"The lack of care shown over the years by the governments for the Greek train system is the caused this tragic event in the Vale of Tempe. Unfortunately, our continuous requests to hire new staff with a long-term contract, better training but especially the implementation of modern technology for security, were disregarded", states a press release by the POS Union.
The representative of the Fire Department, Giannis Artopioos, declared on public TV that the operation to extract the victims from the train wagons are taking place in very difficult conditions. (ANSAmed).
Greece train crash deaths are a result of privatisation and safety cuts
Greek transport minister Kostas Karamanlis has resigned but that should be just the start of the reckoning
Protesters in Athens, Greece (Picture: εργατική αλληλεγγύη/Facebook)
Hundreds of people protested in Athens and Thessaloniki, in Greece, on Wednesday after an horrific train crash killed at least 43 people. The crash came against a backdrop of years of privatisation and safety cuts.
A passenger service and a freight train travelling between Athens and Greece’s second largest city Thessaloniki crashed head on late on Tuesday. Yiannis Ditsas, the head of the rail workers’ union, said the trains had raced towards each other for 12 minutes before colliding.
The exact details of what happened to cause the crash are still unclear—but circumstances paint a picture of serious safety and signalling failures. It is thought that trains going both ways on that section of the line had been diverted onto a single track after an overhead cable was cut.
Some reports say the passenger train was delayed at a station in the city of Larissa for some 20 minutes amid confusion among rail staff about when it should depart. The station master at Larissa is said to have instructed the passenger train to proceed along the same track as the freight train. He has since been arrested.
But Kostas Genidounias, president of the train drivers association, said the collision wouldn’t have happened if the railway had automatic signalling. He told the ERT news channel that these systems hadn’t been working for years.
“We have been complaining for the last few years that the electronic systems do not work and everything is done manually on the Athens-Thessaloniki line,” he said. “Nothing is working. Everything is done with a human factor, manually, manually.
“Not even the indicators, the traffic lights, or traffic control work. If these worked, the train drivers would see the red signal and the trains would stop within 500 metres of each other.
“We’ve said it repeatedly. This would not happen if the safety systems were working. The information is given by the stationmaster via radio.”
The crash has the potential to become a major scandal for the Tory-type New Democracy government, which faces a general election in April. In a grim coincidence, it came just hours before prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was due to visit a remote control signalling centre near Thessaloniki.
Genidounias had posted in response on social media, “K. Mitsotakis will be at the remote control and signalling centre of the railway network of northern Greece tomorrow. Can someone tell us where the signalling and remote control in northern Greece is and where it works?”
The government’s transport minister Kostas Karamanlis has already resigned, apologising for the state of the rail network. “It’s a fact that we inherited the Greek railway in a state that is not fitting for the 21st century,” he said.
“In those three and a half years we made every effort to improve this reality. Unfortunately, those efforts were not adequate to avert such a tragedy.”
In fact, the New Democracy government’s cuts and privatisation policies made the railways more dangerous. In a statement on Wednesday, the radical left coalition Antarsya said the government had subsidised private rail firms as they cut staff and ignored safety warnings.
And Nikos Nikos Kioutsoukis, secretary of the GSEE union, said promised GPS satellite tracking systems, had gone uninstalled for years, even decades. “Modern GPS systems have not been installed yet, they do not work,” he said. “Some have been bought long ago, since 2000.”
Greece’s previous government, led by the once-radical left Syriza, sold the network for 45 million euros in 2017. It did this at the demand of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which insisted on swingeing austerity and privatisation measures in return for a bailout loan.
New Democracy, and the Labour-type Pasok party supported the selloff. Both of them in previous governments had also overseen cuts and reforms designed to prime the network for privatisation.
Antarsya said the crash amounted to a “premeditated crime by the wretched New Democracy government and the previous Syriza-Anel government.”
It added, “Prioritizing balance sheets over human lives, profits over safety, they placed it in the hands of capital, which exploited a public good—transport—without conditions or limits. Their responsibility is self-evident.”
Greek transport minister Kostas Karamanlis has resigned but that should be just the start of the reckoning
Protesters in Athens, Greece (Picture: εργατική αλληλεγγύη/Facebook)
Hundreds of people protested in Athens and Thessaloniki, in Greece, on Wednesday after an horrific train crash killed at least 43 people. The crash came against a backdrop of years of privatisation and safety cuts.
A passenger service and a freight train travelling between Athens and Greece’s second largest city Thessaloniki crashed head on late on Tuesday. Yiannis Ditsas, the head of the rail workers’ union, said the trains had raced towards each other for 12 minutes before colliding.
The exact details of what happened to cause the crash are still unclear—but circumstances paint a picture of serious safety and signalling failures. It is thought that trains going both ways on that section of the line had been diverted onto a single track after an overhead cable was cut.
Some reports say the passenger train was delayed at a station in the city of Larissa for some 20 minutes amid confusion among rail staff about when it should depart. The station master at Larissa is said to have instructed the passenger train to proceed along the same track as the freight train. He has since been arrested.
But Kostas Genidounias, president of the train drivers association, said the collision wouldn’t have happened if the railway had automatic signalling. He told the ERT news channel that these systems hadn’t been working for years.
“We have been complaining for the last few years that the electronic systems do not work and everything is done manually on the Athens-Thessaloniki line,” he said. “Nothing is working. Everything is done with a human factor, manually, manually.
“Not even the indicators, the traffic lights, or traffic control work. If these worked, the train drivers would see the red signal and the trains would stop within 500 metres of each other.
“We’ve said it repeatedly. This would not happen if the safety systems were working. The information is given by the stationmaster via radio.”
The crash has the potential to become a major scandal for the Tory-type New Democracy government, which faces a general election in April. In a grim coincidence, it came just hours before prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was due to visit a remote control signalling centre near Thessaloniki.
Genidounias had posted in response on social media, “K. Mitsotakis will be at the remote control and signalling centre of the railway network of northern Greece tomorrow. Can someone tell us where the signalling and remote control in northern Greece is and where it works?”
The government’s transport minister Kostas Karamanlis has already resigned, apologising for the state of the rail network. “It’s a fact that we inherited the Greek railway in a state that is not fitting for the 21st century,” he said.
“In those three and a half years we made every effort to improve this reality. Unfortunately, those efforts were not adequate to avert such a tragedy.”
In fact, the New Democracy government’s cuts and privatisation policies made the railways more dangerous. In a statement on Wednesday, the radical left coalition Antarsya said the government had subsidised private rail firms as they cut staff and ignored safety warnings.
And Nikos Nikos Kioutsoukis, secretary of the GSEE union, said promised GPS satellite tracking systems, had gone uninstalled for years, even decades. “Modern GPS systems have not been installed yet, they do not work,” he said. “Some have been bought long ago, since 2000.”
Greece’s previous government, led by the once-radical left Syriza, sold the network for 45 million euros in 2017. It did this at the demand of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which insisted on swingeing austerity and privatisation measures in return for a bailout loan.
New Democracy, and the Labour-type Pasok party supported the selloff. Both of them in previous governments had also overseen cuts and reforms designed to prime the network for privatisation.
Antarsya said the crash amounted to a “premeditated crime by the wretched New Democracy government and the previous Syriza-Anel government.”
It added, “Prioritizing balance sheets over human lives, profits over safety, they placed it in the hands of capital, which exploited a public good—transport—without conditions or limits. Their responsibility is self-evident.”
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