“The pictures that I witnessed as soon as I got out of the wagon were incredible, tragic. I saw flames everywhere, pieces of metal from the wagons had melted and many of our people lost their lives, they didn’t have time to get out.” With these words, a passenger of the train that collided with another (freight train) late last night, in the area of ​​Evangelismos, near Tempi, describes to APE the first moments after the tragic accident.

In fact, as he says as he gets off the bus he returned to Thessaloniki with other passengers, he is alive by luck as his seat was in the second carriage, which was engulfed in flames, but he finally sat in the fifth carriage. “I lost it at first, like most passengers, but I tried to keep my cool to help my fellow passengers out of the carriage. We all came together to help,” he described with emotion. “Many did not realize what exactly had happened because they were asleep. I was also sleeping and I was disturbed by a sudden braking. Later, however, when we realized what happened, we tried to get out of the wagon and when we succeeded, we saw the chaos,” he said.

Eleni Karadiamantis, with relief and great emotion hugged her daughter as soon as she got off the bus. “I was trying to contact her and I couldn’t, she had lost her mobile phone. Fortunately, a colleague was with her and helped her out of the carriage. I still can’t get over it, it’s really tragic what happened,” he stressed. Ms Karadiamanti’s daughter was eventually admitted to hospital after she was hit on the back after previously describing to her how firefighters managed to get them out of the carriage by throwing ropes and extricating them.

“Women they were crying, they were shouting and luckily someone managed to open the door and we got out as there was a lot of smoke. They tried to get close to the first wagons and they were all a mass,” said another of the rescued.

Slightly injured, a young lady who was at second waveni, she left the AHEPA hospital accompanied by her parents. All he managed to mutter was that he was fine. “I don’t remember anythingah, I followed two guys and got out, they broke the windows,” he said.

Overall, during the night five buses transported 194 survivors from the scene of the tragic accident to the Thessaloniki railway station. Of these, 26 were initially transferred to AHEPA and 32 to Gennimatas Hospital, with some of them having already been discharged after providing first aid