Train accident in Greece: the pain and anger of relatives left without information
Nearly three days after the deadly train collision in Greece, families, without information about the fate of their loved ones who were on board the train, are crying out in anger and despair.
“Nobody could tell me anything. If my child is injured, if he is in intensive care. Nothing”, gets carried away by the mother of a 23-year-old student, Kalliopi, who was returning from Athens with her little one. friend.
This woman, who did not want to be identified, has been desperately trying since Tuesday evening to obtain information about her daughter, but she has not been able to obtain any either in Thessaloniki, the second city in the country where her child resides, or at the hospital. from Larissa, the town closest to the accident where AFP met her.
It is in this hospital that the delicate work of identifying the bodies takes place.
After having carried out an examination which will make it possible to collect their DNA, she and her husband are anxiously awaiting to know if their daughter is one of the bodies found charred or crushed in the train disaster which left 57 dead, according to a provisional report.
But the doctors told them: “we will not have quick answers on the identifications”.
Desperate, she also says to herself “angry, very angry”.
– Crowded –
“My daughter and I spoke (Tuesday) at 9.30pm (1930 GMT) and all she told me was that the train was packed with people,” she said.
The collision between the passenger train and the freight train, which were traveling on the same track in the opposite direction, occurred shortly before midnight.
Her husband, Lazaros, 49, says he was informed of the accident by chance by television: “I woke up my wife and asked her: our child was not traveling on this train? Our ordeal began there” .
In the height of concern, they very quickly went to the station of Thessaloniki where the young woman was to arrive late in the evening of Tuesday.
At the railway company, Kalliopi’s mother says she found herself facing a wall, without information from management.
“They never picked up their phones. Only a security guard came out to inform us,” she says.
At the Larissa hospital, she also deplores the lack of information:
“They just said to me: ‘you’re going to have a hard time'”.
She is in despair: “You don’t treat parents like that. You can’t tell someone who is in the dark, you’re going to have a hard time, and you have to be strong as well”.