Greece. We are all to blame – Moskovskaya Pravda

This statement was made by Greek Prime Minister Mr. K. Mitsotakis on television, summarizing the preliminary results of the investigation of the recent and, without exaggeration, one of the most significant railway accidents in Europe. With a stunning phrase, the head of government shifted the responsibility for what happened to the citizens, inspired the opposition to call for a general strike under the slogan “the gloomy result of the prime minister’s four years of work.”

The entire population of the country, now under indictment, is preparing for demonstrations. The rehearsal has already passed in solid rows and in a unanimous impulse: the general Greek manifestation dedicated to International Women’s Day has poured into crying, despair and anger. Tens of thousands of relatives, loved ones, friends and sympathetic citizens in various cities reacted emotionally and even aggressively to the train accident in Pembi that happened two weeks ago. The loss of 57 lives and numerous injuries to passengers became the pain of every citizen and, as a result, mass protest. More than 50,000 took to the streets of Athens. Equal to the capital, although in smaller numbers, people gathered in Thessalonica, Patra and other administrative districts. People called the perpetrators to account, demanded that passenger transportation be made safe. Masked extremists were operating in the neighborhood, setting fire to everything around them. There were no arrests.

On the last day of February, freight and passenger trains left Athens and Larissa to meet them.

At 22.48 local time, the driver of one of them on the route backs up in order to fulfill the absurd command of the dispatcher – to change lanes from the free track to another one that leads right in front of the train.

At 23.04 the controller turns arrow key number 118 in a tragic manoeuvre. For almost 20 minutes, on the antediluvian traffic control table, lights come on, indicating the passage of stations through which the trains follow to inevitable death. No one on the route shows an adequate reaction. This has already happened. But somehow it was possible to avoid big catastrophes.

At 23.21 17 seconds, fiery flashes to the very stars lit up the Pembi railway station (Πεμπη). The explosion from the collision of oncoming trains lifted into the sky, like the stages of space carriers, leading locomotives, smashed up to the tail passenger cars, scattered moving parts and large debris for tens of meters. The smartphones of drivers driving up the freeway were full of messages: “Third World.” And no wonder: the combustion temperature at the epicenter of the transport mess corresponded to the characteristics of explosions of depleted small nuclear charges.

Gradually, in order not to harm the survivors, the charred piles of twisted metal are sorted out, literally one car per day. Services take the DNA of relatives to identify the remains and hand them over for burial. The only 500-kilometer railway line operating in Greece from the seaport of Piraeus, where ships from all over the world moor, has been blocked. Civil mourning declared.

“Until 2010, the safety of the railway was ensured by the blocking method of 4 keys,” explained F. Ziliascopoulos, a lecturer at one of the country’s transport scientific institutions in Thessaly. — The basic principle of its work was laid 150 years ago.

In this situation, a bunch of keys would not help either. As it turned out later, the operators arbitrarily left their jobs on this shift. There was simply no one to turn the keys back. It is very strange to hear the scientific theory of the century before last. Its vitality is supported by an old chronic social disease, which Prime Minister K. Mitsotakis declared war on in his televised address, calling for an end to the obscure, well-established remnant in state socio-economic management.

For several days now, the sun has been rising, changing the stars in the sky, highlighting the arch of the railway tunnel behind the rescue equipment and overturned cars a hundred or two meters away. The fact that the train managed to jump out of it was the decisive luck to reduce the scale of the tragedy. In a concrete womb, inquisitive journalists searched in vain for traffic safety equipment. Everything has been plundered. There are no video cameras on the bare walls, there are no hoses and tools in the fire cabinets, emergency exits are blocked. This is how things are on the central highway. On the Peloponnesian next to it, behind the world-famous Corinth Canal, there is a complete abomination of desolation. Rusty rails, and everything from the communications was pulled out to the last copper wire. But in the reporting industry tables, the growth of financial development of budgetary funds. In 2014 – 41 million, in 2021 – 83 million euros.

The transportation business brings fabulous pocket incomes. Meanwhile, according to the Greek newspaper “Ezhednevnaya” (Καθημερινη), the fateful express train of the bankruptcy of the railways has been buzzing for a long time. In five years, from 2007 to 2011, the loss of this tragic section alone exceeded 800 million euros, and the cumulative injection of more than one billion euros of subsidies into the entire rail transport system of the country turned the industry into a black hole. How funds are wasted is clearly displayed by a modern panoramic wall-mounted electronic control panel mounted in the control room at the beginning of the 2000s over the very ill-fated antediluvian table-board with light bulbs. It is still dormant, thus surprising Italian investors.

Horizons, as you know, do not limit the length of roads, and in Greece, including the creativity of officials. They found a very ingenious solution, how to not only draw from the treasury, but also replenish it. Some time ago, urban intersections and coastal highways were swept by roundups of those who did not put anti-skid chains on the wheels of their car or got behind the wheel without simply putting them in the trunk. Traffic inspectors fined drivers for this as much as 80 euros. Wouldn’t an action of bewilderment be caused somewhere in the snowy Alps, but near the beaches sparkling with golden sand? It is unlikely that someone who picks tangerines from a branch will come up with the idea of ​​insidious ice drifts. Papandopoulos, the then Minister of Transportation, found the idea of ​​replenishing the state budget based on the meteorologists’ forecast quite workable. The snow had not yet fallen, and the fines were immediately announced on clear days. Greece, which has lost the lion’s share of its income due to the outflow of Russian tourists, is now suitable for any of the most exotic subtropical means of extortion from the population.

Boris Vakulenko.

Photo by Christina Denisyuk