A total of 79 people have been injured, three of them seriously, in the collision between two trains that occurred on Sunday night, as reported this Monday by the Ministry of Health. The lives of two of the injured are in danger. The collision occurred 20 kilometers from Bratislava between two passenger trains heading to the Slovak capital. About 800 people, mostly students, were traveling in the two convoys.
This is the second accident in Slovakia in just a month. On October 13, fifty people were injured in the head-on collision of two fast trains in the town of Roznava, in the southeast of the country. The Slovak Prime Minister, the populist Robert Fico, called an emergency meeting of the Government this Monday and, upon leaving, announced the dismissal of the entire management of the state railway company.
“I ask the Minister of Transport to immediately dismiss the entire management of ZSSK,” said Fico. “Without prejudice to the direct responsibility of the board, this is a second accident in a short space of time in the transport of people, and in a modernized corridor (with the ETCS system), where the security measure is maximum,” added the prime minister. He has also promised financial compensation to the victims, as well as a plan to install security systems on trains across the country, which will require “large sums of money.”
15 ambulances participated in the relief effort, in addition to 60 police officers and 70 firefighters. Although the causes of the accident have not yet been officially made public, the state company ZSSK has reported that one of the trains ran a red light.
“One of the trains was in a place where it should not be. I am not going to advance the conclusions of the investigation, but it is evident that that train ran a red light,” said Ivan Bednárik, general director of ZSSK. That convoy mistakenly left a stop and was hit from behind, at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour, by another train that was traveling on the same track, Bednárik explained.
