Police and emergency crews look at the particles of a crushed wagon on the second day after a prepare accident within the Tempi Valley close to Larissa, Greece, March 2, 2023.

Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP through Getty Pictures

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Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP through Getty Pictures

Police and emergency crews look at the particles of a crushed wagon on the second day after a prepare accident within the Tempi Valley close to Larissa, Greece, March 2, 2023.

Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP through Getty Pictures

Greek authorities launched a brand new recording on Thursday that make clear what might have precipitated one of many nation’s worst railway wrecks in historical past.

Within the audio, a station supervisor seems to instruct a driver to “cross the crimson sign” earlier than that prepare collided head-on with one other on Tuesday night time native time, close to the town of Larissa in northern Greece, in keeping with Greek information media.

At the very least 57 folks have died on account of the crash and 48 stay within the hospital — together with seven who’re being handled in intensive care models as of Friday morning.

The station grasp already had been arrested and charged with manslaughter by negligence previous to the recording.

Initially the 59-year-old Hellenic Practice worker denied any wrongdoing and blamed the incident on a technical error. However investigators discovered proof that the station supervisor failed to modify the rail line earlier than a passenger prepare and a freight prepare wound up heading towards one another on the identical tracks. Later, Greek authorities stated the station grasp admitted to mishandling the state of affairs.

What occurred

A passenger prepare carrying greater than 350 folks was heading from Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest metropolis, on the day of the crash.

Lots of the passengers had been college students coming back from Carnival, a three-day pageant that precedes the spiritual season of Lent, in keeping with the Related Press. In the meantime Greece’s public media company, ERT, reported that the freight prepare doubtless carried building materials, corresponding to heavy metal plates.

The trains collided head-on at a mixed velocity of of 100 mph because the passenger prepare was exiting a tunnel below a freeway within the municipality of Tempe, near midnight native time.

The nation’s transport minister, Kostas Karamanlis, resigned the following day, saying that the nation’s railway was “in a state that doesn’t swimsuit the twenty first century,” and that his efforts to enhance it had been “not sufficient to forestall such an accident.”

The crash has sparked demonstrations within the nation. Lots of of individuals from left-wing teams marched on Wednesday to protest the prepare deaths, whereas prepare staff went on strike on Thursday over the continual neglect of the nation’s railways.