Greek train crash toll set to rise, government promises answers

[March 02, 2023]  By Lefteris Papadimas and Michele Kambas

LARISSA, Greece (Reuters) -The death toll from Greece's deadliest train crash was set to rise even higher, with 46 confirmed dead but ten people still missing, authorities said on Thursday.

Anger grew across the country over how two trains could smash head-on on the same track and the government said it would do all it could to make sure such a crash never happens again.

Carriages were thrown off the tracks, with two entirely crushed and several engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board and a freight train collided near the city of Larissa late on Tuesday.

"We are all devastated by this tragic incident," government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou told a news conference.

"The loss and trauma this caused, the physical and mental trauma of survivors, and the angst of this country is huge, and its difficult to manage, particularly now."

As many in Greece demanded answers, rescuers continued to comb through charred and buckled rail carriages to try and find more victims.

"The most difficult moment is this one, where instead of saving lives we have to recover bodies," 40-year old rescuer Konstantinos Imanimidis told Reuters on the site of the crash, about 140 miles (230 km) north of Athens.

"Temperatures of 1,200 degrees and more in the carriages cannot allow for anyone to remain alive."

Nearby, two brothers were crying, with 33-year-old Sokratis Bozos saying they had come to the site of the crash in the hope of getting some news of their father, after the hospital could not tell them whether his body had been recovered.

To identify some of the victims, relatives, including the Bozos brothers, had to give DNA samples at a hospital in Larissa, where disbelief turned to anger for some.

"Some bastard has to pay for this," one relative shouted, outside the hospital.

Many of the victims were university students returning home after a long holiday weekend. Scores were injured.

PROTESTS

On Wednesday evening, protesters hurled rocks at train company offices in Athens, before being dispersed by volleys of tear gas fired by riot police. Protests also broke out in Thessaloniki.

Rescuers operate on the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 2, 2023. REUTERS/Alexandros Avramidis

And on Thursday, trains were brought to a halt in a day of strike against what unions said was successive governments' refusal to hear repeated demands to improve safety standards.

The government promised a thorough investigation. Oikonomou said authorities would look into the causes of the accident, and "chronic delays" in implementing rail projects.

"These delays are rooted in chronic ills of the Greek public (sector), to distortions going back decades," he said, adding that the government has tried to deal with this but "did not manage to eradicate it."

Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned over the crash. His successor, Giorgos Gerapetritis said he was taking over on Thursday with a mandate to investigate the crash and modernise the ailing railway system.

INVESTIGATION

The station master of Larissa train station was arrested on Wednesday and appeared before a local magistrate on Thursday. Oikonomou said the man, who has not spoken publicly, had admitted to being guilty of negligence.

Nikos Tsouridis, a retired train driver trainer, said human error did not fully explain what happened.

"The station master made a mistake, he acknowledged it, but surely there should be a safety mechanism to fall back on," he said.

Greece sold railway operator TRAINOSE under its international bailout programme in 2017 to Italy's Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, expecting hundreds of millions of euros to be invested in rail infrastructure in the coming years.

The Italian operation has responsibility for passenger and freight, and the Greek state-controlled OSE for infrastructure.

(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Alexandros Avramidis, Renee Maltezou, Karolina Tagaris, Michele Kambas; Writing by Renee Maltezou and Ingrid Melander; Editing by John Stonestreet and Frank Jack Daniel)

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