Survivors of deadly Greek train crash recall passengers screaming 'we are on fire' as their carriage flipped upside down
- At least 36 people have died after two trains collided head-on in Greece on Tuesday evening.
- Surviving passengers said they had to use luggage to break windows and escape carriages.
Survivors of a deadly train crash in Greece recall passengers screaming "we are on fire" as their carriage flipped upside down, according to Greek news outlet Kathimerini.
At least 36 people have died and more than 80 are injured after two trains — one passenger train and one carrying only cargo — collided head-on in the northern region of Thessaly, Greece, on Tuesday evening.
The collision was so violent that the first two carriages of the passenger train "no longer exist," Kostas Agorastos, the governor of the region told state television, according to the BBC.
Footage from the scene shows derailed carriages, broken windows, and thick plumes of smoke. Shell-shocked passengers who survived the crash told local media they were lucky to be alive.
"We felt the whole carriage shake, the train was coming towards us. I still don't feel alive," one man told Kathimerini. "We could hear people shouting 'we are burning.' It's shocking. I'm still in shock."
Passenger Stergios Minenis, 28, said he jumped to safety from the wreckage after his carriage flipped and came to a stop.
"We heard a big bang," Minenis said, according to Reuters. "We were turning over in the carriage until we fell on our sides and until the commotion stopped. Then there was panic. Cables, fire. The fire was immediate. As we were turning over we were being burned."
Another witness told Kathimerini that the crash felt like an earthquake, adding: "I was in the fourth carriage, the luggage fell and we turned upside down ... Words fail, I thought I was going to die."
People have described having to crawl through windows and over broken glass as they tried to escape.
"There was a woman with a child with us. There was a fire next to us. We found a hole and from there we managed to get out," another passenger told EPT news channel, according to Kathimerini. "It was a nightmarish 10 seconds, in the flames. You couldn't see around you because of the smoke, there was panic."
It is unclear what caused the crash. Several survivors told Kathimerini they were told they would be delayed 15 minutes because of "heavy traffic on the railway lines."
Around 350 people are believed to have been on board the passenger train, while two crew were on the cargo train, Reuters reported, citing Hellenic Train data.
It is still unclear what caused the crash, though officials will be investigating "in full transparency," Infrastructure and Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis, told reporters, according to Reuters.
Agorastos said the trains "were traveling at great speed and one [driver] didn't know the other was coming."