Tempe, Greece – Greece has come to a standstill during a general strike marking the second anniversary of the country’s worst rail disaster with 346 protests counted in Greece and abroad.
Government services, banks and businesses were shuttered on Friday. Ships did not sail, trains did not run and no planes left or entered Greece – a stoppage not seen since the days of the country’s bankruptcy in the post-2009 financial crisis.
An independent accident report released on Thursday cited a litany of chronic equipment failures and human errors in the Greek railway system that led a northbound passenger train to collide head-on with a southbound freight train in the Tempe gorge in northern Greece, killing 57 people.
Many of them were young people returning to university in Thessaloniki after a three-day weekend. Their loss has turned the Tempe accident into a symbol of what many Greeks see as state incompetence and lack of accountability.
“For us, it’s not an accident. It’s a crime,” Nikos Plakias, father of two students who were killed, told media.
“I think what Tempe has managed to do will remain in history – that at long last, politicians will be held responsible. I believe politicians will sit in the dock. If a single politician isn’t called to account, I will say this whole effort has failed,” Plakias said.
Sisters Thomi and Chrysa Plakia and their cousin Anastasia-Maria were sitting in the car directly behind the restaurant car and would have survived if they had not moved there, Plakias believes.
“The girls didn’t have a ticket for that car. They were supposed to be in car number five. In Larissa, lots of people got off and only 20 got on. There were many empty seats, and the girls wanted to sit together, so they asked if there was a free compartment up front, and they were led into the compartment of death.”
Alma Lata lost her daughter, a medical student in the armed forces.
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