Greece awaits answers a year after train disaster

After 57 people were killed in Greece’s worst train disaster a year ago, the government promised to fix a system crumbling from decades of neglect. “Trains will resume operations with safety at the maximum possible level,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said weeks after the crash. One year on, however, crash experts and railway officials say little has been done to significantly improve train safety, despite mounting evidence that system deficiencies helped cause the accident. Remote train control and communication systems, mandatory under European Union law, are still not functioning, officials told Reuters.

Railway staff numbers at the main rail operator have fallen since the crash, and those remaining await fresh training. A lack of reform to Greece’s fragmented railway management has slowed progress, they said. The situation worries experts who say that Greece’s rail network is prone to future accidents if safety is not improved. Meanwhile, grieving families and survivors demand answers. “We haven’t learned our lesson and haven’t acted,” said Costas Lakafossis, an accident investigator commissioned by victims’ relatives. “Unfortunately, the railway is not in a better state.”

The Greek transport ministry told Reuters it is implementing a comprehensive plan to revamp the railway and that there has been significant progress in upgrading railway safety, despite extensive damage caused by flooding in September.

Panagiotis Terezakis, head of Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) which operates the rail network, says it is safe. The OSE had installed 300 infrared cameras in tunnels since the crash and had made progress on the installation of safety systems. He acknowledged, though, that more needs to be done.

OSE has 640 employees, according to unions, fewer than 2023 and half the number in 2013. It plans to hire 90 people next month and up to 500 soon, Terezakis said, adding that the OSE employs 0.4 workers per km of rail, nearly half the EU average. “This is a railway system which for the past 15 years has been in decline. You cannot resurrect it within a year,” he told Reuters, adding that red tape remained a big hurdle.

“I have a degree in engineering. I am not God.”

On Feb. 28, 2023, a passenger train packed with students collided head-on with a freight train just before midnight on a line linking Athens with Greece’s second city Thessaloniki. The crash, the country’s deadliest in history, triggered protests across Greece, where it was seen as the result of a wider neglect of public services following a decade-long financial crisis. The government promised reform. It commissioned an investigation, seen by Reuters, which found that the crash might have been averted if two key systems had been in place: ETCS, which can remotely control a train’s speed and its brakes; and GSM-R, a wireless network allowing communication between station masters, train drivers and traffic controllers.

GSM-R is still not activated on all trains, two OSE officials told Reuters.

The ETCS has been installed across rail tracks, after a nine-year delay, but is not operational as it has not been added to trains pending certification, four OSE workers and officials told Reuters. An EU prosecutor has charged 18 Greek public officials for over multiple, illegal extensions to the project.

Flooding later damaged telecom systems across a 90-km section on the same Athens-Thessaloniki route. The cost to restore it is estimated at 450 million euros by the government.

“The situation remains largely the same, unfortunately,” said Nikolaos Tsikalakis, head of the workers union at OSE.

The EU Agency for Railways completed a safety assessment last year, whose draft findings were seen by Reuters. It said EU regulations were not implemented correctly in Greece, while underfunding and a complex system of overlapping agencies had slowed change.

“There appears to be no entity in Greece taking on overall responsibility to ensure railway safety,” the draft said.

A planned merger of OSE and its subsidiaries will help address administration issues, the transport ministry said.

Survivors and relatives are still haunted.

Maria Karistianou, who lost her 20-year-old daughter in the disaster, says politicians must assume responsibility for a crash caused also by systemic deficiencies. So far, about 800,000 people have signed a petition to scrap laws protecting ministers from prosecution.

“The state is still playing with our pain, our grieving and undermines the entire society,” Karistianou told Reuters. Survivors said they were suffering from post-traumatic stress and struggling with haunting nightmares, according to five lawsuits against the state, seen by Reuters. A year later, they are still experiencing the same stress, their lawyers said. Crash survivor Stavroula Kapsali said everything has changed in her life — she cannot sleep and is constantly frightened. She has not been on trains since the crash, fearing they are not safe. “How can you not pay attention to systems providing passenger safety?” she said. “I feel I left a piece of myself in there...The burden is huge.”

Reuters