Shocking footage emerged on Wednesday showing small groups of individuals vandalizing and removing railroad tracks and related infrastructure in southern Greece, a long-standing scourge plaguing the country’s already beleaguered rail system.
One such instance was reportedly responsible for disabling a track in north-central Greece on the fateful day of Feb. 28, 2023, requiring the temporary movement of one train along a track used by trains headed in the opposite direction. A subsequent “human error” by a station master, according to initial reports, failed to redirect the train to its proper north-bound line, resulting in its head-on collision with a south-bound freight train – the shocking Tempi rail disaster that claimed the lives of 57 people.
On Wednesday, drone footage aired by the Athens-based Skai channel showed, in one instance, three masked suspects trying to pry off rail tracks in broad daylight, and with other trains passing by along the adjacent track.
Another video, shot near the south-central city of Thebes, shows suspects breaking concrete slabs in an effort to retrieve copper-laden electrical cables. Monitoring and lighting controls are knocked out if such cables are removed or tampered with.
Yet more footage shows vandals digging to find and cut cables near the RR station of Thriasio, due west of Athens. Once they spot the airborne drone they flee the scene.
“Their goal is the copper; possible sabotage also comes to mind, and we’re trying to monitor this situation,” according to Yannis Festeridis, the head of security for Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) facilities. He added that the worst instance he’s witnessed was the deliberate tossing of a concrete block from a bridge onto a rail line.
According to the television report aired on Skai, the stolen cables are transported and burned in fires next to Roma camps in the Aspropyrgos municipality, an industrial and warehouse district west of the greater Athens-Piraeus area. The copper that is melted away from the cables is then reportedly sold to illegal scrap years.
