The station manager accused of being behind the railway disaster in which 42 people died (new figures) testifies this Thursday before the court of Lárisa, the closest city in central Greece to the tragic accident
Text: RFI / AFP
The 59-year-old stationmaster was arrested on Wednesday, March 1, and charged with “negligent homicide” and causing “bodily harm.” If he is found guilty, he faces life in prison. He will have to explain how a train carrying 342 passengers and ten railway workers, linking Athens to Thessaloniki in the north of the country, was allowed to use the same track as a freight train.
Rescuers at the site said they had never responded to a disaster of this magnitude. Many bodies were burned and some passengers were identified by parts of their bodies.
“Time is running against us,” say rescuers in Greece.
The two trains collided head-on after several kilometers on the same road. The accident resulted in 42 deaths, a fire brigade spokeswoman told the AFP agency on Thursday, March 2, and search operations, with 72 firefighters deployed, continued throughout the night.
«We continue (tonight) because time is running against us. The more time passes, the less chance there is of finding survivors,” she stated. Many of the passengers were students returning to Thessaloniki after a long weekend.
In the violent collision in the Tempé Valley shortly before midnight (22:00 GMT) on Tuesday night, the locomotives and lead cars were wrecked and the drivers of both trains were killed instantly.
“Everything indicates that the tragedy is due, unfortunately, above all to a tragic human error,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared on Wednesday night, while the controversy in the country grows over the state of the network, which many consider outdated.
An outdated network
The rail network is traditionally underdeveloped and outdated, and the Greeks mostly use a dense network of bus connections. Contacted by AFP, the Italian state group Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), which controls the Hellenic Train railway company, privatized in 2017, had no immediate comment. Residents protested in Larissa with banners reading ‘Privatization Kills’.
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