The Greek station manager accused of putting a speeding passenger train into the path of an oncoming freight train was expected in court on Saturday to face manslaughter charges in the deadliest rail disaster in Greek history.
But as Greek officials described the crash as a tragic case of human error, public opinion was galvanizing against the government for years of safety neglect — not against a man who fellow rail workers and protesters say is being scapegoated.
“They want to say it’s one man’s fault,” said Antonis Bompotis, 26, who was among hundreds of protesters who gathered on Friday in Larissa, a city near the crash site. “But it’s a government of murderers.” Outside the courthouse on Saturday, protesters held signs criticizing the government for ignoring years of warnings that a rail disaster was inevitable.
“Wasn’t an accident, wasn’t a tragedy,” one banner read. “It was state negligence and an assassination.”
The station manager, 59, who has not been publicly identified, has privately acknowledged mistakes, according to excerpts from his statements to the authorities, which have been published in the Greek news media. Radio recordings published by a Greek news website show a train driver being told to ignore a red light.
“Pass the red signal,” the station manager told the driver late Tuesday night, according to the recordings.
Potential mistakes, though, are only part of the story. Rail workers say the traffic lights were always red because of years of technical failures. Trains had been placed on the wrong track before, they said, leaving workers to warn one another of oncoming trains only by walkie-talkie.
“I’d cross myself every time for a crash not to happen,” said Theodor Leventis, a train safety supervisor of 20 years. He attended a vigil for the train’s victims in front of Larissa’s train station on Friday. “I was sure it would happen,” he added.
Mr. Leventis, 65, retired two years ago after working on the same route where the crash had occurred. “They can’t say a man is responsible,” he said. “The only one responsible is the government.”
The Greek government was supposed to have installed an automated safety system nearly three years ago, but it received extensions amid a contentious contracting process. That system is intended to sound alarms and automatically stop locomotives in dangerous situations. In the days after the crash, the Greek government has not explained why that system was so behind schedule. Neither have officials with the European Union, which spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade to improve a rail system that, by multiple measures, is the deadliest in Europe.
Railway unions have long warned of looming disaster. Workers said their fears started to mount after the financial crisis that devastated Greece’s economy in 2010. Railway staffing was sharply cut and unions have said for years that their members were overworked and assigned to important stations without proper training experience.
Giorgos Apostoleris, a former station master, recalled being transferred a few years ago to Larissa on an hour’s notice. He worried then about who would be held responsible if he made a mistake. Tragedy, he said Friday, was all but inevitable. “It even took too long for an accident to happen,” he said in an interview.
Greek state news media reported that the Larissa station master had only recently been assigned to the post after six months of training.
As recently as last month, rail workers warned the government in a letter that they did not want to wait for a coming accident “to see them cry crocodile tears,” and that intervention was urgent.
“We have tried strikes for years, we have told every government about these issues, but we have not found open ears,” said Νikolaos Tsikalakis, a railroad switchman and the president of the staff union of the Greek national railroad organization. “So we came to this tragic accident.”
Greece’s transportation minister resigned shortly after the crash, acknowledging that efforts to improve the nation’s rail safety system had been insufficient.
As Greeks laid bouquets of white roses on the rail tracks, they also cursed the government. At vigils, they lit candles and murmured that they did not “believe their lies” anymore. As they rode a bus in the plain at the foot of Mount Olympus, by the trucks that removed broken off carriages from the site of the crash, some commuters shrugged in fear.
“If they only blame a human mistake and don’t change the system,” said George Gkonelas, 53, a commuter, “it’s going to happen again.”
Chrysostomos Trimmis, Niki Kitsantonis and Giannis Giannakopoulos contributed reporting.
