The tragedy would have taken on much greater dimensions if the collision had occurred a few meters earlier, inside the tunnel, estimated the president of the Anti-Seismic Planning and Protection Organization, Efthymis Lekkas, speaking on the SKAI “Today” show, with Akis Pavlopoulos and Dimitris Housekeeper.

In detail, Mr. Lekkas emphasized: “We are dealing with a case where, for a fraction of a second, if the two trains had collided in the tunnel, things would have been much more tragic. Because basically from the tunnel, it would be extremely unlikely that even a few people would get out.

The kinetic energy of the trains would lead to distortion of both trains, and now we saw that they were ostracized left and right.

The temperatures and fire would be unimaginable and there would also be a chance that the gallery itself would collapse under certain circumstances. So imagine that in such a case no one could escape and on the other hand no help could be offered. We would have had a much greater tragedy” assessed the professor.

“Immediate reaction of civil protection”

At the same time, he referred to the immediate reaction of the civil protection: “What we must note is that we were dealing with an excellent management by the civil protection of the region, EKAB, EMAK and the Police. Within a short time all the services were there and that should be noted.”