“I thought we were going to burn alive in the wagon. I thought I wouldn’t make it out alive». With these words, Mr 28-year-old Stergios Minaemis describes the moment of the collision of the two trains in the area of ​​Evangelismos, near Larissa.

“I could see the flames, the wagon was filled with smoke, nothing I could see around me and suddenly I saw light from a broken window and I alerted the rest to get out. We were bringing somersaults… We didn’t know how and where the wagon would stop”, says the young man, who is being treated at the AHEPA hospital. With the scars on his face testifying to what he went through, shocked by the magnitude of the tragedy, he says how he himself lives by miracle.

“The fire broke out next to the broken glass. The cables were burning and black smoke was coming out. When I got out, I jumped on the wreckage. I was stepping on them and everything was still warm from the crash. The first image I saw was a man thrown out in front of me. We didn’t know what happened, if the train collided, if we hit an animal“, he notes.

Stergios lost his cellphone during the tragic accident and once he made it out alive, he says he tried to alert his parents on social media.

The 28-year-old is originally from Volos but works in Thessaloniki and it was one of the few times he had taken the train.