by Stavros Begetis, B2 photo by Orthodox Times (en)
On the 28th of February 2023, a passenger train and a cargo train collided at Tempi in Greece. The cause of this incident was human error, a lack of modern, automatic safety equipment and a lack of railway personnel responsible for the traffic. This resulted in the collision of the trains killing 57 people and injuring 85 a lot of them being university students.
At 23:11 the passenger train IC62 collided with a cargo train at the railway from Athens to Thessaloniki with 350 passengers on board. The collision caused the two front carts of the passenger train to burst into flames with inside temperatures reaching 1.300 degrees Celsius after a violent explosion, completely destroying them while most of the other carts were derailed.
A lot of witnesses were traumatized by the tragedy and needed psychological therapy while a witness decided to even end his life from the shock.
A witness from the train incident, Theodore Katsioulis from the third cart was hospitalized for three days with a broken nose, minor head fractures and a body covered in wounds by the broken glass. He claims the following:
“As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw my death. I was on the ground, injured, there was darkness everywhere. I prayed. The cart was engulfed in flames. There was smoke everywhere, I couldn’t breathe, I’m still struggling to breathe. A young man was trying to break the window, when he succeeded with an iron, I got up to jump out of there. When I got closer, I saw that we were very high, I thought we were on a bridge”. What he focuses on during his confession are the reactions of those who rushed to help. Everyone was trying to help. In the darkness I heard the woman sitting next to me, asking me to help her children. I had seen them greeting their father on boarding. I took the one child in my arms, he was pale, scared and I held his hands. I told him not to be afraid and to jump out of the window. I did the same with the second child. We all helped, no one thought only of himself. I saw them a few minutes before and after the crash. When I opened my eyes and saw the fire, I went crazy. I didn’t believe that they didn’t exist, they had been debased. There are no words. It’s a tragedy. I haven’t closed an eye all these days, I can’t calm down, I can’t get the images I saw out of my mind. I lit a candle and I pray for the people who perished so unjustly», concludes Mr. Katsioulis.
