At least 36 people died and dozens more were injured in the head-on collision between two trains near the city of Larissa on Tuesday night.
The front carriages of a passenger train involved were mostly destroyed.
“We heard a big bang,” said 28-year-old passenger Stergios Minenis, who jumped to safety from the wreckage.
“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. Fire was right and left,” Mr Minenis was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
“For 10, 15 seconds it was chaos. Tumbling over, fires, cables hanging, broken windows, people screaming, people trapped.”
The passenger train had been travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki when it crashed head-on with the other freight train, causing the front carriages to burst into flames, shortly before midnight local time.
It is being described as the worst train crash Greece has ever seen.
Survivors have described the panic and chaos of the crash, with one shaken passenger telling Skai television, “the windows suddenly exploded” and “people were screaming and were afraid”.
“Fortunately, we were able to open the doors and escape fairly quickly. In other wagons, they did not manage to get out, and one wagon even caught fire.”
Some passengers said they were forced to break carriage windows with their bodies or luggage to escape the burning wreckage.
Angelos Tsiamouras told Greek broadcaster ERT the crash had felt like an earthquake, and he smashed the train window using his suitcase. “We broke the windows with our backs,” another unnamed passenger said.
One survivor, Lazos, told the newspaper Protothema: “I wasn’t hurt, but I was stained with blood from other people who were injured near me.”
An investigation has been launched to find out how it occurred.
Many of the 350 passengers on board the passenger train were students in their 20s returning to Thessaloniki after a long weekend celebrating Greek Orthodox Lent.
Sixty-six people were being treated in hospital for their injuries, including six admitted to intensive care.
“It was a very powerful collision,” the regional governor of the Thessaly region, Kostas Agorastos, told state-run television.
He said the first four carriages of the passenger train were derailed, and the first two carriages caught fire and were “almost completely destroyed”.
“They were travelling at great speed and one (driver) didn’t know the other was coming,” the governor added.
As daylight broke, dozens of rescue workers aided with cranes were lifting the derailed carriages to search the wreckage for more victims.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life. It’s tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies,” an exhausted rescuer emerging from the wreckage told AFP news agency.
Three days of national mourning have been declared over the tragic incident.
BBC
