The testimony of the second expert of the “Gerapetritis committee” was also completed in investigative committee of the Parliament for “the investigation of the Tempe crime”.

Asked by the ND MP, L. Tsavdaridis, about the possible mistakes of the stationmaster and the train drivers, Mr. Pyrgidis said: The first mistake is that the station master he knew from experience that the line works in both axes, both ascent and descent. The second is that it didn’t automatically plot the route. If he didn’t do it this way and did it in another way, that is, he did it based on the buttons he had on the remote control panel, there he should definitely check that the changes were settled in that position. If they were not arranged correctly, he would “flash”, see it on the board and send the locksmith to fix it. And the third, is the announcement that he gave the driver to leave. There, as he announced it, with “you pass the red light” with a telegram “47” etc., he gave it correctly and that meant he was going to the up line.. Of the drivers (of the passenger train) he said that “in the regulation of traffic, where there is article 1204, it says that the driver stops, communicates, as soon as he sees that he has entered the descent line, communicates to continue further, plus there is also the form “1001”, which in this case should to have taken that as well, from the moment it enters a descent line”.

For if the automatic train protection system (ETCS) could by itself, given that there was no route drawn, could have prevented the collision, Mr. Pyrgidis responded affirmatively, however, to Mr. Tsavdaridis’ remark that “there must be a person who has drawn a route, for for the remote control to work” and that “if there is no person who has drawn a route, the remote control is useless” Mr. Pyrgidis replied “Obviously”.

It is noted that in his intervention, the parliamentarian of the ND, I. Fotilas submitted to the committee a document of the OSE, “dated one month before the fire of 2019, from which document it appears that the only station that was seen by remote control in (location) Zaharis it was the remote control of the commercial until the next one, that is, Evangelismos, while the accident happened between Evangelismos and New Resources. [..] Therefore, even if the remote control system in Zahari was operating in the form it was before the fire of 2019, we would still not have an image of the accident through the Zahari remote control station.”

In the report of the member of the KKE, N. Karathanasopoulou for a lack of staff at the OSE, for its insufficient training, and for the intensification of working conditions, Mr. Pyrgidis said that “since the ETCS system has not been completed, no signaling has been installed, and we have one signaling on the Athens- Thessaloniki, from which it is under-functioning, in my opinion, and since we have telephone blocking in some sections, we should strengthen this way of operating the line. We had to strengthen in this particular case, from the moment the human factor enters, the executives we use in these processes. With the concept of empowerment – it also appears from the conclusion we have made – it seems that we should have had more than one station master. At least one station master should be highly experienced, they should be properly trained, this whole process should be properly supervised.”

Mr. Pyrgidis was asked by the MP of SYRIZA-PS, B. Kokkali, if the panel of experts dealt with the issue of the explosion and fire that followed the collision of the two trains, answering in the negative. Based on this answer, Mr. Kokkalis submitted a request “to summon the experts who dealt with the issue of the explosion, namely Mr. Bantzopoulos and Mr. Vasilakos who have been appointed by the appellant-investigator, and Mr. Lakafosis from the side of the families”.

The investigative committee will meet again tomorrow Wednesday, in order to receive the statements of the third of the experts of the “Gerapetritis committee”, Mr. Io. Chalkias and Mr. Sp. Pateras, former president and managing director of the OSE.