The explosion at the Serres school: who is to blame

The police understands who is to blame for the explosion at a school in the city of Serres, where a 12-year-old student was killed this afternoon and two more students were injured.

One student was killed and two others injured when a boiler exploded at an elementary school in Serres, northern Greece, on Monday. The sixth-grader was taken to a local hospital in an unconscious state, and doctors could only state his death. Two other schoolchildren, aged 6.5 and 11, were taken to the hospital with injuries, nothing threatens their lives, local media reported. The state broadcaster ERT later reported that while the older boy was released after receiving first aid, the younger boy had to be transferred to Thessaloniki due to a broken parietal bone and eye injuries.

Together with other students, the three victims were in the school yard during recess when the incident occurred at 2:30 pm on Monday. They went there to play because of the rain. A strong explosion in the boiler room scattered pieces of equipment about 30-40 meters, fatally injuring a 12-year-old boy and inflicting minor injuries on two other students aged 6 and 11.

The door that was displaced by the explosion and thrown a long distance away is the blue iron door shown in the photo below:

The cause of the explosion remains unknown to this day. The boiler house is located in an annex, most likely the explosion occurred due to fuel vapors, local media aveserres.gr say.

The heating system of Primary School 9 was running on fuel oil at the time of the explosion, although a geothermal system had also recently been installed but not yet operational. Maintenance of schools, and therefore boiler and heating systems, belongs to the municipalities. Referring to a tragic incident, Principal Tsiotsius stated that the project engineer in charge informed them that due to damage to the new heating system, the school should be heated as before, that is, with fuel oil.

The principal accused the contractor and the workers of doing the work while the school was open. “They came and went as they pleased. They came in today for final adjustments and told us that from now on we will not use the oil boiler as the geothermal system will work,” Tsiotzios told state news agency amna. “The boiler room exploded because, apparently, they didn’t turn off the oil boiler and didn’t let it work normally. I was told it was disabled. I cannot connect the explosion with something else, because the boiler exploded,” the director emphasized.

The police and the Ministry of Education assured that a full investigation into the causes of the tragedy would be carried out.

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