Death of a passenger on a train: Ukrzaliznytsia provides details of the tragedy
19 July 2024 16:06
Ukrzaliznytsia has confirmed the death of a passenger from the heat on a train. This was announced by the head of the national railway carrier’s passenger division, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, on the air of the Breakfast with 1 1 programme, reports [Kommersant].
According to him, the carriage in which the passenger was travelling was without air conditioning.
“It is confirmed. We just don’t follow up on every such case, but unfortunately, with more than 100,000 people travelling on trains, especially in the summer, such natural deaths do happen,” Pertsovsky said.
He added that an investigation is underway to answer the question of whether the train tragedy could have been prevented.
“In this case, in particular, we are looking at whether it could have been prevented, whether we could have reacted more quickly, how quickly the medics were called and how quickly they arrived. We have no conclusions on this case yet,” said Pertsovsky.
The head of Ukrzaliznytsia’s passenger division also spoke frankly about the fact that half of the rolling stock is not equipped with air conditioning at all. And this is despite the fact that this summer Ukraine has set one temperature record after another.
“All temperature records have been broken, and half of our fleet is not equipped with air conditioning at all. We are now clearly marking the cars with reliable air conditioning systems with a snowflake so that people know,” said Alexander Pertsovsky.
What happened on the Zaporizhzhia-Uzhhorod train
A few days earlier, Ukrainian journalists Vitaliy Glagola and Inessa Voronova wrote on social media that a person had died in a Ukrzaliznytsia carriage because of the heat.
“At night, a woman from our compartment, who was travelling to Stryi to visit her friend, suddenly died – the heat in the unstarred carriages is unreal, all passengers are wet and out of breath, it’s not a journey, it’s a mockery,” Voronova wrote on her Facebook page.
In the comments to the post, Ukrainians began to actively discuss the conditions in the cars of the national railway carrier in this summer’s heat wave:
- “We were travelling with an asterisk – it’s even worse, and the air conditioning doesn’t work and the windows don’t open.”
- “So what? No official comments either on this case or on IS (Intercity – ed.)”.
- “This is just a horror… I hope that the woman’s relatives will sue Ukrzaliznytsia.”
