No ventilation system at Athen's main train station for 8 years: Report

By Magda Panoutsopoulou

ATHENS (AA) – The ventilation system at Omonia train station in downtown Athens has not been operational despite receiving a complaint over eight years ago.

After the deadly train accident on Feb. 28 that killed 57 people, more details about Greece's transportation system and its flaws surfaced.

In Greece's transportation system, there is a lack of staff, non-existence of the necessary safety systems, or a general lack of safety systems that could prevent a human error, a local newspaper revealed on Monday.

Following the initial complaint in 2015, an employee filed a complaint in 2018 about the malfunctioning ventilation system in the Monastiraki-Omonoia tunnel section, one of Athens' most central train stations that serves hundreds of people daily, according to the daily ta Nea.

The Athens Criminal Prosecutor appointed two experts in March 2018 as part of an urgent order to investigate whether the provisions of the law regarding safety are met at the tunnel section between Monastiraki-Omonia and Attiki station.

Panos Kontogiannis, president of the railway employees' union STASY, told the newspaper that the problem has not been resolved five years after the complaint.

Kontogiannis stated that the problem was discovered during a recent demonstration in downtown Athens, as well as from the chemical used during the demonstration.

"If a fire breaks out in the tunnel, the smoke will not be able to be channeled out and even if workers and passengers manage to escape the fire, they will die of suffocation. And because there are no visible signs for the emergency exits, they won't know where to run from," Dimitris Gourtis, a member of the STASY workers' health and safety committee, told the newspaper.

The union also complained about a lack of staff, particularly station masters, as well as thousands of overtime working hours and severe shortages of materials and spare parts for equipment. ​​​​​​​