Latest news with #HellenicAirandRailSafetyInvestigationAuthority
Saudi Gazette
28-02-2025
- Saudi Gazette
Report reveals Tempi train crash was a result of human error, outdated infrastructure
ATHENS — A long-awaited report on the investigation into Greece's deadliest train crash was released on Thursday. The report blames human error, outdated infrastructure and major systemic failures for the tragic accident that killed 57 people two years ago. The almost 180-page report was released on the eve of a general strike and mass protests planned for the second anniversary of the 28 February, 2023 crash. The independent investigative committee found that a routing mistake by a station master sent a passenger train onto the same track as an oncoming freight train. The collision, which killed 46 passengers and 11 staff, occurred near Tempi, some 400 km north of the capital, Athens. Investigators also identified poor training, staff shortages and an aging railway system that lacks modern safety controls as contributors to the tragic incident. 'An accident doesn't occur by chance,' he said. 'There are accumulating factors that contribute to the accident, because humans also tend to make mistakes,' said Christos Papadimitriou, Director of the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority, the group responsible for the investigation. 'The Greek railway system didn't have in 2023 – it doesn't have today too,' he added, referencing the lack of public spending on railways systems due to the financial crisis of 2010-18. The report noted that if modern day safety technologies were in place, such an accident would not have occurred. The government said it would respond to the 'very serious shortcoming and understaffing and underfunding,' but added that claims made by opposition parties that it had hindered the investigation are not true. The government is also deploying 5,000 police officers to patrol Athens on Friday, as public demonstrations and the general strike are expected to halt and disrupt public services and commercial activity. — Euronews
Al Jazeera
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Anger mounts as Greece remembers deadliest train crash two years on
Tempe, Greece – Greece has come to a standstill during a general strike marking the second anniversary of the country's worst rail disaster with 346 protests counted in Greece and abroad. Government services, banks and businesses were shuttered on Friday. Ships did not sail, trains did not run and no planes left or entered Greece – a stoppage not seen since the days of the country's bankruptcy in the post-2009 financial crisis. An independent accident report released on Thursday cited a litany of chronic equipment failures and human errors in the Greek railway system that led a northbound passenger train to collide head-on with a southbound freight train in the Tempe gorge in northern Greece, killing 57 people. Many of them were young people returning to university in Thessaloniki after a three-day weekend. Their loss has turned the Tempe accident into a symbol of what many Greeks see as state incompetence and lack of accountability. 'For us, it's not an accident. It's a crime,' Nikos Plakias, father of two students who were killed, told Al Jazeera. 'I think what Tempe has managed to do will remain in history – that at long last, politicians will be held responsible. I believe politicians will sit in the dock. If a single politician isn't called to account, I will say this whole effort has failed,' Plakias said. Sisters Thomi and Chrysa Plakia and their cousin Anastasia-Maria were sitting in the car directly behind the restaurant car and would have survived if they had not moved there, Plakias believes. 'The girls didn't have a ticket for that car. They were supposed to be in car number five. In Larissa, lots of people got off and only 20 got on. There were many empty seats, and the girls wanted to sit together, so they asked if there was a free compartment up front, and they were led into the compartment of death.' Alma Lata lost her daughter, a medical student in the armed forces. 'We're fighting for children's future, for a better society,' she told Al Jazeera. 'Everyone needs to come out on the 28th for their own children, … Our children are gone. They're not coming back. But we must fight for the other children.' The Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority said on Thursday that Greece already suffered from a poor rail safety culture and outdated practices but governments made matters worse by mismanaging the financial crisis. Severe austerity policies gutted the state-owned Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) of staff and left equipment to decay, it said. Those were not the only charges laid at the door of Greece's political elite. A 2014 contract funded by the European Union to install safety equipment throughout the network, known as Contract 717, had not been fully carried out nine years later, the experts said. 'Contract 717 was not the specific target of our investigation, but let me say, and I am not referring to OSE rank and file but to senior officials, all those who delayed the implementation of 717 have decisively contributed to the deaths of these children,' said the authority's president, Christos Papadimitriou. Many people suspect funds were squandered, and 1.3 million people have signed a petition to strip cabinet ministers of immunity so transport ministers across four governments can be tried. On the day of the accident alone, and within a few kilometres of Larissa, whose stationmaster put the train on a collision course, the authority found a slew of human and technical problems that contributed to the disaster. The Larissa stationmaster was not properly trained to use the automated controls that had been installed, so he reverted to a manual system that didn't show him what track trains were on. Had he used it, he would have seen that he had inadvertently switched passenger train 62 to the southbound track. A signal north of the station that was meant to have been fixed under Contract 717 was out of order, meaning the stationmaster had to give train engineers permission to go verbally. Leaked recordings of the conversation between them show they didn't follow proper verbal protocol, investigators said, and the stationmaster told the engineer to proceed without having ascertained he was on the southbound track. Two sections of track north and south of Larissa had reverted to single-track use on the day of the accident because of technical failures. The train engineer would not have thought it odd that he was on the southbound track, and he didn't question it. Attempted cover-up? The ruling conservative New Democracy party has also been accused of an attempted cover-up. 'We encountered serious problems in the investigation,' Papadimitriou said. 'The transformation of the crash site into a ceremonial space led to the loss of serious evidence.' Tonnes of gravel from the site were bulldozed away days after the crash, ostensibly to rebuild the tracks and restore rail service, but it was so hastily done, the smashed rolling stock still held human remains as it was hoisted away. Relatives of the victims hired Anubis Coldcase K9 Team, which specialises in body recoveries. Anubis found body parts of several victims, including extremities of the Plakias girls, nine months after the accident. The government's haste raised suspicion it was trying to avoid chemical analysis of residues left by a fire after the crash. Surveillance video shows an electric arc igniting two explosions after impact. 'There is a possible presence of a hitherto unknown fuel,' the investigators said. 'The autopsy of the accident site was not done in a proper way to be able to identify afterwards the type of fuel that was transported and caused the fireball,' said Bernd Accou, one of the investigators. Two official reports released in 2023 from the Hellenic Fire Service and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation blamed the fire on silicon oils leaking from the locomotives' transformer coils. Victims' relatives did not believe that and commissioned chemical studies of their own, which showed there were potential residues of xylene, a flammable solvent used in paints, varnishes and inks. The fire killed only five to seven of the victims, investigators said, but the suspected cover-up has become a lightning rod for anger among the public, which accuses the government of being more intent on protecting incompetent loyalists than providing safe transport. 'The government stance from the very beginning was an attempt to cover things up at the political and public relations level because this happened March 1 and on May 16 we had a general election,' Plakias said. 'The government was afraid of the political fallout and behaved amateurishly.' The collision at a combined speed of 240 kilometres per hour (150 miles per hour) was so violent, it destroyed the locomotive and first six cars of the passenger train, experts said. That is because the locomotives of the passenger train and the oncoming freight train derailed as they smashed into each other, exposing the passenger train's restaurant car to a secondary collision with flatbed cars carrying steel plates. It was in the restaurant car that the fire burned longest and most violently, the investigative report said.
Euronews
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Report reveals Tempi train crash was a result of human error, outdated infrastructure
A long awaited report on the investigation into Greece's deadliest train crash was released on Thursday. The report blames human error, outdated infrastructure and major systemic failures for the tragic accident that killed 57 people two years ago. The almost 180-page report was released on the eve of a general strike and mass protests planned for the second anniversary of the 28 February, 2023 crash. The independent investigative committee found that a routing mistake by a station master sent a passenger train onto the same track as an oncoming freight train. The collision, which killed 46 passengers and 11 staff, occurred near Tempi, some 400 km north of the capital, Athens. Investigators also identified poor training, staff shortages and an ageing railway system that lacks modern safety controls as contributors to the tragic incident. 'An accident doesn't occur by chance,' he said. 'There are accumulating factors that contribute to the accident, because humans also tend to make mistakes,' said Christos Papadimitriou, Director of the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority, the group responsible for the investigation. 'The Greek railway system didn't have in 2023 – it doesn't have today too,' he added, referencing the lack of public spending on railways systems due to the financial crisis of 2010-18. The report noted that if modern day safety technologies were in place, such an accident would not have occurred. The government said it would respond to the 'very serious shortcoming and understaffing and underfunding,' but added that claims made by opposition parties that it had hindered the investigation are not true. The government is also deploying 5,000 police officers to patrol Athens on Friday, as public demonstrations and the general strike are expected to halt and disrupt public services and commercial activity.
The Hill
27-02-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Greek rail disaster report cites errors and major systemic failures
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A long-awaited report on the investigation into Greece's deadliest train crash was released Thursday, blaming human error, outdated infrastructure and major systemic failures for the head-on collision that killed 57 people two years ago. The 178-page report was issued on the eve of a general strike and mass protests planned for the second anniversary of the Feb. 28, 2023 crash, fueled by public anger over the slow pace of a separate judicial inquiry. The independent investigative committee found that a routing mistake by a station master sent a passenger train onto the same track as an oncoming freight train. The collision, which killed 46 passengers and 11 staff including both train drivers, occurred near Tempe, 375 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens. Investigators also highlighted poor training, staff shortages and a deteriorating railway system that lacked automated safety controls, noting a chronic lack of public investment during the 2010-18 financial crisis. The findings were published by the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority. Authority director Christos Papadimitriou told The Associated Press that many safety improvements remain unfinished. 'An accident doesn't occur by chance,' he said. 'There are accumulating factors that contribute to the accident, because humans also tend to make mistakes.' He added: 'The Greek railway system didn't have in 2023 — it doesn't have today, too — the safety systems needed so that if one or two persons together make a mistake, such was the case in Tempe with the train driver and the station master, there would be mechanisms that won't allow this accident to happen.' The government said that it would respond to the 'very serious shortcomings and understaffing and underfunding,' but added that claims made by opposition parties that it had hindered the investigation had been shown to be false. 'A cover-up is a very serious allegation and this is not (demonstrated) at any point in these findings,' government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said. The government is deploying 5,000 police to patrol Athens Friday with public demonstrations planned and a general strike expected to halt or disrupt flights, ferries, public services and commercial activity.
