Gas pipe claim at Tempe crash site dismissed by opposition MP as a ‘lie’
A claim by Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis on Wednesday that one of the reasons why the site of last year’s railway disaster in Tempe was covered up shortly after the accident was because a gas pipeline runs directly beneath it was dismissed as a “lie” by an opposition MP.
Speaking in Parliament during a heated debate on a motion of no confidence tabled by the opposition, Floridis said “those who talk about concrete being poured” over the site of the accident are “lame” and that “not a single centimeter of concrete” was used. Instead, soil and gravel were poured “to create inroads so that the rescue crews could approach the site. There is also a natural gas pipeline at the site of the accident, which was covered with gravel for safety reasons,” he said.
SYRIZA’s shadow infrastructure minister, Haralambos Mamoulakis, said there is no pipeline carrying natural gas under the site.
“You belatedly brought it up as an argument. It is a lie, because you obviously know from [Greek gas grid operator] DESFA that no gas pipeline network runs beneath the rural road, which was the point set by the [rescue operation] coordinator to reach ground zero,” he said addressing the minister. “So this is a lie and you must immediately retract it.”
The train collision on February 28, 2023, the country’s deadliest, killed 57 people, most of them young university students returning from a long weekend break.
An association of victims and survivors of the crash have accused authorities of authorizing the premature covering of the site, allegedly hindering experts from conducting a proper investigation.
Authorities have claimed that one of the reasons the site was covered was to make way for the cranes that would move the train carriages, extricate any injured people and collect the dead.
