Greece train collision – Death toll climbs to 44

The confirmed death toll after the Tempi train crash disaster in Greece has risen to 44 (officially 42, says the Fire Brigade’s press spokesperson Fire Colonel Vasilis Vathrakogiannis) on Wednesday evening.

Of

the hospitalized 72 train passengers, 15 were released and 57 will remain in hospital – of whom 6 are being treated in Intensive Care Units, it was added.

PM Mitsotakis addresses the nation on Tempi train crash

Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke about the Tempi fatal train disaster in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday evening.

The Premier announced that Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis is to immediately become the interim Infrastructure & Transport Minister until the upcoming national elections, following the Wednesday resignation of Infrastructure & Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis.

Karamanlis “assumed the objective political responsibility, and immediately submitted his resignation,” said Mitsotakis, and “so did the heads of the Hellenic Rainways Organization (OSE) and of OSE’s projects branch ErgOSE, he noted; Karamanlis’ stance “honors him,” he added, “as everything shows that the accident is mainly due, unfortunately, to tragic human error.”

Mitsotakis mentioned that he has already requested that Gerapetritis proceed, as soon as possible, with establishing an independent, cross-party committee of experts that will fully investigate the causes of the accident, but which “will also look at the perennial delays in the implementation of railway projects,” he added.

Speaking of his visit to the Tempi crash site earlier in the day, Mitsotakis said it was “a scene of a tragedy that will forever be etched in our collective memory,” and that “dozens of our fellow citizens -most of them young people- lost their lives there, in a horrible train accident unprecedented in our country.”

The prime minister thanked firefighters and rescuers, ambulance paramedics and police officers, local government authorities, as well as “doctors, health workers, and the psychologists in our hospitals, as they did -and are doing- their best under extremely adverse conditions.”

Mitsotakis, who earlier on Wednesday at Larissa General Hospital in Greece met with relatives of the victims of the train crash and also of those still missing  said that “in their unspeakable pain, with a surplus of dignity, they asked me “why”. And they told me “never again”. We owe them an honest answer.”

The country’s judicial system “will do its own work,” he said, and “responsibilities will be assigned, while the state will stand by the victims’ families.”

“We will mourn our children, our siblings, our friends. We will stay united in this tragedy too. And, then, we will bow our heads and grit our teeth. We will work so that this ‘never again’ that I heard in Larissa will not remain just empty words.”

Minister Karamanlis resigns over Tempi train disaster

Earlier, Infrastructure & Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned on Wednesday, following the fatal train crash at Tempi.

In his statement, Karamanlis noted that “I feel it is my duty [to step down], and a minimal gesture of respect to the memory of the people who perished so unfairly, and to take responsibility for the long-standing errors of the Greek state and the political system.”

“It is a fact that we inherited the Greek railway [from the previous government] in a condition incompatible with 21st century standards,” he added, and continued to say that “in these 3.5 years, we made every effort to improve this reality. Unfortunately, these efforts were not enough to prevent such an accident, and this is very heavy for all of us, and for me personally.”

Karamanlis announced his resignation after returning from his visit to the site of the train accident at Tempi, adding in his statement that “the pain cannot be worded sufficiently.”

“When something so tragic happens, it is not possible to carry on as if it didn’t happen. I have only been in politics for a few years, but I consider it a necessary element of our democracy that the citizens of our country trust the political system. This is called political responsibility,” he noted.

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