An 11-minute silence in the wireless communications on the night at Tempi adds another gap to the credibility of the investigations following the accident and intensifies the doubts generated by revelations about the alteration of evidence, which will be relied upon in the future trial.
According to Data Journalists website, a list of digital files submitted to the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee by OSE’s interim CEO Panagiotis Terezakis on February 1, 2024, includes an 11-minute wireless silence immediately after the fateful Intercity 62 train left Larissa station, to collide head-on 15 minutes later with freight train 63503.
Terezakis, when submitting the list to Parliament, spoke of «extracting data from the signal system recorders in Larissa and Mezourlo (neighboring station), which were collected the same day by a specialized and appointed employee of the manufacturing company in the presence of the Police, an investigating officer, and myself.» He added that the procedure «was recorded and videotaped by the investigating officer himself, and we handed over these data keeping a copy for OSE, one copy was received by the investigator and one copy was taken by ERGOSE.»
In the excerpt we present, there is a section of the list with the hundreds of digital files of VHF wireless conversations from February 28, 2023. Each time someone within Larissa Station’s range, whether a stationmaster, a driver, a keyholder, or anyone else involved, presses the button to speak on the radio, a new file opens which «closes» once the conversation ends, which can also be heard by all others. In the specific section of the list, there are 32 different files recorded over a period of 34 minutes, between 10:46 p.m. and 11:20 p.m. That is approximately one file, that is, one conversation per minute passing. The same applies to a more extended chronological list of 96 files over 101 minutes between 9:46 p.m. and 11:27 p.m.
It is noteworthy that the timestamp on the list submitted to the Inquiry by Mr. Terezakis shows a delay of 10 minutes. For example, the contentious files, 3e3_443 and 3e4_443, are recorded with times of 10:54 p.m. and 10:55 p.m respectively, but they describe events at the time the 62 train left Larissa, that is at 11:04 p.m. as stated by the stationmaster. These are the files that were altered and merged to be played in the media the next day, even before 24 hours had passed since the tragic accident, as revealed by «To Vima» newspaper.
The file 3e3_443 is the last one in which the imprisoned stationmaster of Larissa, Vasilis Samaras, speaks with the driver Giorgos Koutsoubas, who lost his life in the head-on collision. The included conversation is as follows:
Driver: Larissa hearing?
Stationmaster: Hear… with 47 number (the number of the oral telegram) you pass the red exit light signal up to the entry light signal of Neoi Poroi.
Driver: Thank you very much
The file 3e4_443 includes the following conversation:
Driver: Vasilis…
Stationmaster: Sotiris let’s go.
Driver: Vasilis, am I leaving?
Stationmaster: You are leaving, you are leaving
These two files were merged, but the first seconds of the second were also removed, so it would not appear that the stationmaster was talking to another driver, Sotiris Adamou, who was waiting to depart for a local route to Volos. Thus merged, they were presented by the website «Proto Thema» at 22:11 on the night of March 1, 2023, and replicated in the blink of an eye by all the media outlets.
This way, the narrative of the tragic human error was clearly reinforced as the main cause which the government, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis from day one in Tempi and until New Democracy wrote its own 700-page report, has tried so hard to promote.
The montage was selectively and masterfully implemented. The stationmaster, with his order, appeared not to realize that he was sending the train the wrong way, down the downline track (otherwise he should have explicitly mentioned it and given a written order). The driver thanks and departs, and after a while, it is supposedly asked again, «Vasilis, am I leaving?»
This question sparked theories that the driver saw he was on the wrong track for the downline and therefore asked. However, the response «You are leaving, you are leaving» came, and he proceeded towards destruction. A seasoned driver who would have seen his train changing tracks without a written order would have immediately stopped and questioned the stationmaster. Giorgos Koutsoubas was highly experienced, and the omission of any mention was never credible to his fellow drivers.
However, the unexplained gap of 11 minutes begins at 10:56 p.m., two minutes after the 62 train left Larissa station. The keys 118A and 118B, which were left in a crossed position and fatally sent the train on the downline track, are 1,400 meters away from the station.
Thus, the gap starts at the moment the track is changed. The driver Giorgos Koutsoubas does not appear to question what has happened and ask for confirmation. For 11 minutes, no one else uses the radio from the people working inside or around the station (keyholders, drivers, engine house, guards at level crossings, etc.). The same gap, with the same duration, is also observed in the other list of telephone calls to and from the stationmaster’s office.
The silence is broken at the moment the head-on collision has just happened. In file 3e7_443 at 11:07 p.m., someone is heard complaining to the stationmaster about a power outage. Shortly afterward, at 11:11 p.m. according to the incorrect timestamp of the list, the telephone call to the stationmaster is recorded from the OSE Traction Controller in Thessaloniki.
The Controller monitors the electrical loads across the entire northern part of the network. He has seen that there is a short circuit «somewhere in Rapsani» and asks the stationmaster if he knows anything further. The short circuit he asks about, unfortunately, results from the violent head-on collision that has already killed dozens of people.
The 25,000-volt cables have been cut, as after the collision, the engines of the trains were thrown into the air, and electrical discharges led to the huge explosion captured on video.
From there on, radio and telephone will again begin to record calls almost every minute. The stationmaster will be slow to understand exactly what has happened, until he receives calls from the Fire Service and then from the Police. He will continue to give instructions to the keyholder and respond to inquiries from other train drivers.
When informed that there is a fire, he will initially believe there was some derailment. It will take nearly an hour and for the more experienced stationmasters to rush to the station, until it is realized at 12:05 a.m. that there was not a derailment but a head-on collision.
From that moment, the fiasco of investigating the crime in Tempi commences. Valuable evidence will be lost with the rushed covering up at the collision site. Files from OSE’s security cameras, which could show whether the freight train was carrying containers suggestive of flammable liquids, will be erased.
The official state investigation agency, EODASAM, will get a management only in September 2023, six months after Tempi, and will start its «investigation» a year later. The investigations will be undertaken by traffic police experts, while from OSE’s side, Panagiotis Terezakis, who until then was an advisor to the administration, will take over officially on March 17, remaining even today «interim CEO» with problematic legitimacy.
The Director of Traffic, K. Chrysagis, will be killed in a mysterious car accident on March 27, 2023, resulting in the loss of all the background knowledge he had regarding train traffic and stationmaster training.
In the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, maneuvers by the majority will dominate, insisting in supporting the narrative that only human errors were to blame on the night of Tempi. The majority will avoid calling critical witnesses who had previously reported gaps in the safety systems, like former TRAINEOSE CEO Filippos Tsalidis, the ERGOSE official Chr. Katsiolis, and the former OSE CEO K. Spiliopoulos.
Neither will they call the former president of the drivers’ union K. Genidounias, who sent legal notices to Minister K. Karamanlis without receiving a reply and reported cut-and-sew editing of the recorded conversations that were heard on the channels in the first days after the accident.
All the above were compounded by revelations about the operation of the montage in the audio conversations and allegations that the usb sticks with the digital files were circulating and shared with every interested party before ending up with the competent authorities on March 3.
Who could exclude, therefore, that along this path some files were not just tampered with but vanished entirely? What would it imply if one of those files included the calls of the driver trying to communicate unsuccessfully with the stationmaster?
Why would someone want to hide such a desperate call? The questions mount, further undermining the credibility of the judicial investigation. And the 11-minute gap of silence in the Larissa station’s recordings takes on immense proportions…
