Greece’s Government Ignores the Deadly Lessons of Austerity
A year after a rail crash in Tempe killed 57 people, Greece’s ruling New Democracy party filed a report blaming the accident on staff. But victims’ families point to the years of cuts and neglect that created an avoidable tragedy.
Rescue workers at the site of a derailed passenger train following a collision with a cargo train in the Tempe valley near Larissa, Greece, on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. (Konstantinos Tsakalidis / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Less than a week after last February’s deadly train crash in Tempe, Greece, Kostas Lakafosis received a phone call from the father of one of the fifty-seven people who had died. “They said you have to help me investigate,” said Lakafosis. “Because things aren’t being done properly.”
Lakafosis, a mechanical and aeronautical engineer with expertise in accident investigations, formed a committee of technicians to take on the project. Over the year that followed, the team of engineers and accident analysts delved into what exactly happened — and what could have prevented the tragedy.
The committee commissioned by the victims’ families presented their findings in a press conference just a few days before the one-year anniversary of the Tempe crash. They concluded that there was both human error and systemic problems that led to the collision.
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