What went unsuitable in Greece? All to learn about lethal prepare crash | transport Information

EXPLAINER

A minimum of 46 folks have been killed when a passenger prepare collided head-on with a cargo prepare outdoors the town of Larissa.

Dozens of individuals have been killed when two trains collided head-on in central Greece, within the nation’s deadliest rail crash on document.

Here’s what we all know up to now.

What occurred and when?

• A passenger prepare travelling from the capital, Athens, to the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki collided with a cargo prepare carrying delivery containers coming from the other way on the identical monitor.
• The passenger prepare was carrying 342 travellers and 10 crew, whereas there have been two crew members on the cargo prepare.
• The prepare left Athens with passengers at 7:22pm (19:22 GMT). Authorities have been knowledgeable in regards to the accident simply earlier than midnight.
• The derailing carriages burst into flames after the collision. Temperatures in a single carriage rose to 1,300 levels Celsius (2,370 levels Fahrenheit) after it caught hearth.
• As of Thursday morning, the dying toll was 46.

The place did it occur?

• The crash occurred outdoors the central city of Larissa, some 376km (235 miles) north of Athens, within the municipality of Tempi.
  

  

What do we all know in regards to the casualties?

• Most of the victims have been considered college college students returning to their houses after an extended vacation weekend.
• Various our bodies have been charred past recognition and a few passengers have been being recognized from physique elements.
• Kin of the victims went to a hospital in Larissa the place they have been requested to present DNA samples to be checked towards these retrieved from the crash website.
• Greece’s firefighting service mentioned 57 folks remained hospitalised late on Wednesday, together with six in intensive care.
• Greater than 15 others have been discharged after receiving remedy.
• Greater than 200 individuals who have been unhurt or suffered minor accidents have been taken by bus to Thessaloniki, 130km (80 miles) to the north.

What went unsuitable?

• Authorities are nonetheless investigating the circumstances that led to the crash.
• Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis mentioned it occurred “primarily on account of a tragic human error” however didn’t elaborate.
• Police have arrested the Larissa station grasp, who’s answerable for rail visitors on that stretch of the tracks. He was on account of seem earlier than a prosecutor Thursday to be formally charged.
• Investigators have been making an attempt to find out why each trains have been on the identical monitor “for a lot of kilometres”.
• Yiannis Ditsas, head of the railway employees union, informed Skai TV that computerized signalling on the crash website had not been working.
• Business consultants say methods that sign whether or not a monitor is already occupied by setting off a crimson gentle or that routinely function a swap to divert a prepare onto one other monitor will not be correctly maintained.
• “Pink lights malfunction fairly often or they activate for no cause, and the tradition within the Greek rail system is that drivers and station masters have discovered to disregard them,” mentioned Al Jazeera’s John Psaropoulos, reporting from Larissa.
• “The final dialog recorded between the station grasp and the passenger prepare driver suggests precisely such an incident of merely ignoring the signalling. The station grasp says, ‘you might be good to go, you might be good to go,’; the prepare driver wasn’t certain if the signalling was right for him to depart,” he added.
• Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, saying he was taking accountability for the state’s longstanding failures to repair a railway system that, he mentioned, “was not match for the twenty first century”.
• Nikos Tsouridis, a retired prepare driver coach, mentioned drivers concerned within the crash had died “as a result of there have been no security measures”. “And why have been there no security measures? The station grasp made a mistake, he acknowledged it. However absolutely there ought to be a security mechanism to fall again on,” he mentioned.
• Practice unionists say the protection shortcomings of the Athens-Thessaloniki railway line, the principle one within the nation, had been recognized for years.
• Greece offered railway operator TRAINOSE below its worldwide bailout programme in 2017 to Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, anticipating a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of euros to be invested in rail infrastructure within the coming years.

What’s the newest on the bottom?

• Rescuers resumed a search on Thursday for survivors.
• A complete of seven charred our bodies have been recovered from the passenger prepare’s third wagon, which served as a restaurant.
• Authorities spokesman Giannis Oikonomou was anticipated to replace the media round noon on Thursday.
• Authorities have declared three days of nationwide mourning.

How have folks reacted?

• Railway employees nationwide walked off the job on Thursday, saying successive governments had ignored repeated calls for to enhance security requirements.
• In Athens, folks in a whole lot marched late on Wednesday to protest towards the prepare deaths.
• Minor clashes broke out as some protesters threw stones on the workplaces of Greece’s rail operator and riot police and set dumpsters on hearth. No arrests or accidents have been reported.
• Internationally, flags flew at half-staff outdoors all European Fee buildings in Brussels whereas world leaders expressed their condolences. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pope Francis have been amongst these to condole.

What do survivors say?

• Some survivors described the second when the crash befell.
• “There was panic … The fireplace was quick. As we have been turning over, we have been being burned; the fireplace was proper and left,” Stergios Minenis, a 28-year-old who jumped to security, informed Reuters.
• “Home windows have been being smashed, and other people have been screaming … One of many home windows caved in from the affect of iron from the opposite prepare,” one other passenger, who escaped from the fifth carriage, informed Skai TV.