Page 14 - Report of the railway accidents investigated in 2023

Annual report 2023
English. The certificate of employment of a railway accidents investigator is valid until January 2027.
The Safety Investigation Bureau’s work is led by the Director. There are three officials working under him, an aviation accident investigation expert, a chief specialist in maritime accident investigation and a chief specialist in railway accident investigation. At the end of 2022, the officials responsible for safety investigations were appointed senior investigators in the relevant field. Additionally, a separate working committee of officials was formed in 2021 whose task is to give an initial assessment of the circumstances of the sinking of the passenger ferry “Estonia” in an autumn storm of 1994.
Only the Safety Investigation Bureau has the right to make the decision whether to initiate a safety investigation of an accident, serious accident, or an incident. The safety investigation must be conducted within 12 months during which an investigation report must also be completed. The report is signed by all members of the committee or in the absence thereof, the investigator-in-charge who conducted the investigation. The report is signed off by the Director of the ESIB. The report is then forwarded to all relevant parties and published on the ESIB website. An interim report is published after 12 months if during this time the safety investigation has not been completed.
1.4 Organisational flow
The Safety Investigation Bureau is an organic part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. The Safety Investigation Bureau is the only structural unit within the Ministry that does not bear the name of a department. Larger departments are divided into services. With just a few officials the Safety Investigation Bureau does not have services. At the same time, due to its specific duties the ESIB has more rights and is legally more independent than other departments.
Based on the decision made by the Government of the Republic, in 2023 the preliminary assessment of the circumstances of the sinking of the passenger ferry “Estonia” in September 1994 continued. The assessment of the circumstances of the sinking of “Estonia” is carried out using a separate budget and was not completed during the reporting year. Instead of the 8 specialists as on the previous year, there are now 3 on a fixed-term contract work in cooperation with the relevant working groups from the Finnish and Swedish safety investigation agencies. The “Estonia” working group works separately from the other ESIB officials.
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