“There was panic, the fire was immediate”: the survivors of the brutal train crash in Greece speak

“There was panic, cables everywhere. The fire was immediate, when we were overturning we were burning. There was fire left and right.” This is how passenger Stergios Minenis, 28, describes how the accident was experienced from within.

Some statements that record the seriousness of this clash that has settled, at least, with the lives of 36 passengers. Besides, 130 people have been injured. A tragedy that took place after two trains collided head-on near the Greek town of Tempe, in the center of the country.

Another of the passengers who was in one of the last carriages has indicated that he could feel how the train trembled and then overturned. “I managed to get out and went to the front. The train was bent at a 90 degree angle, half was hanging over the cliff, burning. There were five people injured right where I was standing,” she explained.

In one of the trains that have collided there were around 350 people. Passengers have indicated that at least two-thirds of the train was occupied, the vast majority by young people.

“My son doesn’t answer the phone”, a woman could be heard saying as she waited at a train station in Thessaloniki. Another woman has run to hug her daughter as she got off a bus with survivors. “Mom, no, I’m hurt,” her daughter responded immediately to reassure her.

Many passengers were returning home after a long holiday weekend due to the beginning of the Greek Orthodox Lent. In principle, it is believed that most of the people who took this train were university students.

Witnesses have acknowledged that they felt a strong tremor, then a roar and chaos. “People were thrown from the front carriages due to the impact”, they have revealed. In fact, some of the victims have been found up to 40 meters away from the wreckage, while others were trapped in burning wagons.

“They were breaking the windows and people were screaming. One of the windows was broken by the impact of the iron from the other train,” a passenger in the fifth car confessed to Skai TV.

As dawn broke, rescue teams crawled through a smoking, shattered mass of steel as cranes slowly removed the train pieces. The rescue team is still working on the ground and the country has decided to declare three days of mourning.