“We experienced hell. The mother lost the child and the child lost the mother”, described the municipal councilor of the municipality of Thessaloniki Stefanos Gogakos, a passenger of the fatal train in Tempe, the moments he experienced in the tragic train accident at Tempelast night.

Mr. Gogakos, who was riding in the fifth carriage of the train that had started from Athens, was injured in the head and after first aid from the EKAV crews he returned by bus to Thessaloniki.

“I was returning to Thessaloniki from work in Athens, by the fast train. Arriving outside Larissa, an announcement was made that there was a problem with the lines and that we would need to make a 15 minute stop. A little later and while the train had started again, we heard one deafening noise. All the windows of our carriage were broken and smoke was coming in from fire. The atmosphere was suffocating,” he said.

“From the strong impact I was thrown into the air and hit my head on the ceiling. Many passengers fell from their seats, people screamed. The lights went out and the only resources we had were the flashlights from the mobile phones. Then the OSE people came, opened the doors and we slowly got out. Walking on a dirt road we came out in a clearing, where the ambulances were waiting for us. I had blood on my head, they treated us and then put us on the buses to go back to Thessaloniki”, he added.

Several students, according to Mr. Gogakos, helped other passengers who were trapped and who were injured and could not get out of the train on their own, while he added that the occupancy of the specific route was at 100%. “I often travel by train to Athens and back again. This time, all the carriages were full and all the seats occupied. I thank God that I am alive.”

“My daughter called me in a panic”

Twenty minutes before 12 midnight, businessman Stelios Ribas received a phone call from his 25-year-old daughter Alexandra, who was traveling from Athens to Thessaloniki by train. “The child called me in a panic, a few minutes after the incident. He was in the sixth carriage, the penultimate one. It was dark, as half the carriage was inside the tunnel and the rest outside. There was fire and smoke everywhere,” said Mr. Ribas, speaking to APE-MPE.

“She told me she was fine and I urged her to find a way to get off the train. Little by little, together with the rest of the passengers of the carriages, they were guided to a safe place, where they were picked up by KTEL buses, having earlier recorded their details, to return to Thessaloniki. In all this tragedy and loss, she was lucky along with the others,” added the 25-year-old’s father.

“There are no words to describe the incident – The accident happened a little further down from the traffic accident with the PAOK fans”

Mobilization in the area was immediate. The administration of the municipality of Tempo was also on site to offer assistance to the fire crews, the police and the passengers. “There are no words to describe the event. It is very heavy what we see. An amorphous mass of ironwork”, said, for his part, the deputy mayor of the municipality of Tempo Giorgos Dontos, who was at the scene of the tragedy from the first minutes.

“The first wagon is burnt, the second a mass and the third derailed. The accident happened at the point of Evangelismos, a little below where the PAOK children were killed. As we were informed by the residents of the area, the impact was so intense that they felt as if an earthquake had occurred. In a radius of 5 km, some people who were awake thought that an earthquake had occurred”, added Mr. Dodtos, speaking to “FM Agency”, expressing his sincere condolences to the families of the victims.