The Great Greek Train Wreck.

[oldtimer]

2 Trains carrying 350 people collided head on at high speed in Greece today.

It looks like the greatest man made disaster in Greece in at least 23 years (Sinking of Samina 82 dead in 2000).

So far 15 dead and 60 injured, but the first half of the trains have not been abled yet to be searched, because they look completely destroyed.

The record for Greece was 273 dead in the Sinking of Falkonera in 1966.

[oldtimer]

It was bound to happen as you can read here:

https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-the-news/Greece-s-deadly-rail-tracks-199485

[oldtimer]

21 dead 78 injured so far.

Talk on greek TV that the death toll might exceed 100, since half of all carriages have been shredded.

This could be the deadliest train wreck in europe since 1998 or even exceeding it.

The passenger train apparently was delayed due to an electrical fault, and that might have caused a schedule conflict with the cargo train that was due to use the track in the opposide direction.

https://twitter.com/mynameis_evi/status/1630727145025679361/photo/1

[oldtimer]

Here is a link to the only live TV feed from the train wreck rescue efforts:

https://www.skaitv.gr/live

[oldtimer]

The greek press reports that the death toll is up to 29.

https://en.protothema.gr/seven-dead-in-train-crash-in-larissa-videos-photos/

The majority of passengers appear to have been students returning from holiday.

[oldtimer]

According to the press so far out of around 350 passengers:

194 have been rescued.
29 dead.
85 injured.

There are still looking for missing passengers, which should be around 40-45.

[oldtimer]

Here is a link from one of the survivors just seconds after the disaster:

[oldtimer]

The first resignation.

The Transport Minister Karamanlis (nephew of the ex-PM who also was a nephew of an ex-PM) has resigned.

The death toll has reached 40 with still around 50 missing (no one is sure because no one counted who survived and who was on the train).

[oldtimer]

I honestly thought "The Great Greek Train Wreck" would be a new megathread about Greek politics.

Unfortunately not.

It's the largest train disaster in Europe in probably 25 years, and as I mentiioned it was entirely predictable and avoidable.

[oldtimer]

Horrible tragedy. RIP for the victims.

I've read that a train station manager of Larissa, near the accident site, was arrested by the police and charges will be announced in the coming days.

I'm waiting for the Italian Government to way in, the Greek railways are run by the Italian State Railways.

Also I heard on greek TV that the rail network was so starved of funds by the Italians they had to use the old morse code rail telegraph to try to coordinate manually the rail points.

[oldtimer]

I honestly thought "The Great Greek Train Wreck" would be a new megathread about Greek politics.

Well as already explained, it is maybe kind of symbolic.

I know, It's ironic but unfortunately very deadly.

[oldtimer]

Horrible tragedy. RIP for the victims.

I've read that the train station manager of Larissa, near the accident site, was arrested by the police and charges will be announced in the coming days.

The Station Manager was only 36 days into his job, it is said that he had been a book seller at the Department of Education before being appointed Station Manager in the run up to the Election.

However because an Election is due in the next few weeks or months, a lot of political driven rumours will fly and no one will know for sure.

The EU Commision had warned the Greek government about the condition of their railways and that cannot be hidden, but Italy will also be dragged into it.

[oldtimer]

The Rescuers can see another 10-15 mostly intact dead bodies from outside the windows of carriages but cannot yet get into them because of the carnage.

Plus all the scattered limbs and other body fragments everywhere.

The collision had a combined speed of something around 130mph to 160mph.

[oldtimer]

44 dead so far, 75% of them where under the age of 24.
They have narrowed down the missing passengers to 35.

Here is a cctv video of the collision, but it doesn't show much:

[oldtimer]

As time progresses more details are uncovered why the disaster happened.
 
It appears that the Greek railways are still using their 19th century point systems and communications because they never paid the private contractor to install the late 20th century ones from British Rail, in 2003.

The contractor went bust because the greek government would always defer it's payments, so they are still there in their original box unsused.

It is typical for the greek government to refuse to pay it's bills to private contractors, that's the main reason why the contractors in greece double the size of the bill from the original contracts in any public works or procurement as an insurance (bribery of public officials is another form of insurance of payment by the public sector).

[oldtimer]

What a tragedy.

The Transportation Minister has already resigned and a rail executive been arrested.

Yes, but the son of the Prosecutor who was assigned the case to investigate this, works in the private office of the now ex-Transport Minister.

So it's unlikely that this train wreck will be investigated because the Prosecutor will also have to investigate his own son.

Welcome to the world of greek corruption.

The only way that this will be investigated is if the EU Commission bites and threatens the cash flow of EU funds, and of course a foreign prosecutor gets the case.

(There is precedence, UEFA have already installed foreign referees in greek football because they never trust a greek referee)

[oldtimer]

What a tragedy.

The Transportation Minister has already resigned and a rail executive been arrested.

Yes, but the son of the Prosecutor who was assigned the case to investigate this, works in the private office of the now ex-Transport Minister.

So it's unlikely that this train wreck will be investigated because the Prosecutor will also have to investigate his own son.

Welcome to the world of greek corruption.

The only way that this will be investigated is if the EU Commission bites and threatens the cash flow of EU funds, and of course a foreign prosecutor gets the case.

(There is precedence, UEFA have already installed foreign referees in greek football because they never trust a greek referee)

I hope the EU gets involved. The initial reports suggest a wrong indication or wrong information (possibly by the arrested station manager?) was given to the crew one of the trains, which would mean this crash doesn't have to do with incapacitated, tired, or distracted crews. In this day and age wrong indication or miscommunication crashes shouldn't be happening in Europe.

The EU Commission already had an idea that something very wrong was going on just 2 weeks ago:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_593

[oldtimer]

According to the Coroner the death toll has reached 57.

There are 10 bags full of body parts of still not recognised passengers.

[oldtimer]

There are still 56 missing.
If they are all dead then the death toll will reach 113, which will be the deadliest train disaster in Europe in 63 years.

In today's revelations the EU had provided 43 million euros to upgrade the warning systems by 2016 but nothing happened and the passenger train was also carrying commercial propane tanks but no one can find out why.

There is also growing anger and violent protests by student groups, 3/4 of the dead and missing are students under the age of 24.

[oldtimer]

The general election that was due to be declared tomorrow for April 9th, will be postponed until an unknown later date, probably to May 21st but it's very fluid.

On the political front it's a calm before the storm, due to the 3 day official mourning period.
All political parties and the biggest lawyers are busy collecting as much information and paperwork to publish and leak for the Sunday edition of the newspapers.

There is still silence from the Italian side, although they are in it up to their necks.

[oldtimer]

Greek media have also reported that the Railways Accidents Commision was unstaffed after the government had neglected to appoint replacements after the previous members 5 year term expired.

And something for environmentalists to chew on, there are allegations so far unsubstantiated that a specific bus company had paid bribes to deliberately downgrade rail services in order to increase road traffic.

So far all these leaks are just the preliminaries of the tsunami that might arrive when the Sunday newspaper editions are published.

[oldtimer]

The station manager was appointed to his post it seems only 5 days before, at a salary of 49k euros a year ( about 5 times the local minimum wage) through an exam that the main question was "can you count how many carriages are there on a train?" and he was the only one who applied for the job at Larissa Train Station, but who appointed him?

The local government MP Ms. Stella Mpiziou is already publicly protesting her innocence before anyone had even officialy accused her.

[oldtimer]

The Italian side of the issue is retaining it's silence.
 
I'm not really suprised since the person the Italian State Railways appointed to head the greek railways, Dario Lo Bosco, had been arrested for accepting bribes from the sicilian mafia in 2015.

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2015/10/29/rfi-rail-company-chief-arrested-in-kickbacks-probe-2_361f5e86-fdbd-4a23-99e4-496279c42501.html

https://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2015/10/29/news/tangenti_in_manette_il_presidente_di_rfi_dario_lo_bosco-126124838/

[oldtimer]

One of the 3 members of the Investigative Commission has resigned after the public outcry due to his conflict of interest, he was Chairman and CEO of the Greek Railways in the 2010-2015 period and he had to investigate himself.

The Prosecutor who has the case has not recused himself despite his own conflict of interest, regarding his own son who works at the private office of the now resigned Transport Minister and his close family relations to the Karamanlis family.

[oldtimer]

While Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane only owns the trains and not the railway infrastructure, I am quite frustrated - no actually, embarrassed - that they are pretending to be completely extraneous to the fact.

Speaking of which, I am not even sure all of the trials for the 2009 Viareggio train derailment have ended yet. The scale of everything in this one (structural mismanagement and obscolence, direct human responsibility, death toll) seems so obviously worse, but Greek institutional failures also seem much worse, therefore I have low expectations about the aftermath.

They bought the Greek Railways for 45 million euros in 2017 in exchange for a 50 million euros annual government subsidy until the year 2036.

The actual privatization contract is a state secret and no one has seen or read it, probably not even the people who signed it.

The Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane affair is by itself a scandal ready to explode.