Anger in Greece over poor railway safety grew on Thursday as the death toll from one of the country’s worst train crashes in recent years reached 57.
Demonstrators poured onto the streets after the head-on collision between a passenger train carrying more than 350 people and a freight train on Tuesday evening in Tempi, near the city of Larissa.
Police already had a presence outside the Hellenic Train headquarters before the demonstrators arrived. The protest was peaceful, following unrest on Wednesday in which demonstrators clashed with police. Speaking earlier to Greek media, Dimitris Bournazis, who is still trying to get news about his father and brother, said no one has given him any information. Bournazis said he was trying to contact the company to find out where on the train his relatives were sitting at the time of the crash. He said he called the offices of Hellenic Train three times but no one has called him back.
“What we did was to break the glass, which was already cracked, and to throw the luggage outside the carriage, so we can land somewhere soft,” he told ERT, describing how he helped around 10 people escape. It accused the federal government of “disrespect” towards railways for causing the tragic crash, saying “more permanent staff, better training and mainly the implementation of modern security systems, are permanently thrown in the bin.”
He said the transport minister’s decision to resign was honorable, and added that the heads of Hellenic Railways Organization and its subsidiary ERGOSE have also submitted their resignations.
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