There was a crash that killed 57 people after a train driver ignored a red light

The crash of a passenger train with more than 350 passengers collided with a freight train in Athens, Greece, on Tuesday night

Rescue workers are in a desperate search for survivors after a head-on collision between two trains in central Greece killed dozens of people and injured scores.

A passenger train carrying more than 350 people collided with a freight train in central Greece on Tuesday night, killing at least 32 people and injuring more than 80, according to the Greek Fire Service.

“We just heard a bang… the (train) car started spinning, before ending up sideways when we managed to exit,” one male passenger told Greek public broadcaster ERT.

The focus of the recovery efforts is on the first two carriages, according to the Greek Fire Service. The death toll is likely to go up.

The students were returning from a three-day festival called Carnival, which precedes the religious season of Lent. Heavy steel plates may have been on the freight train, according to Greece’s public media agency.

Images on Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT showed plumes of thick smoke pouring out of toppled carriages and long lines of rescue vehicles next to them.

Passengers who received minor injuries or were unharmed were transported by bus to Thessaloniki, 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the north. Police took their names as they arrived, in an effort to track anyone who may be missing.

Rail operator Hellenic Train said the northbound passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, had about 350 passengers on board.

The explosion of a passenger train in northern Greece’s Vale of Tempe (Athena) at the crossing line between the Macedonian and Thessaly regions

Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near the town of Tempe on Tuesday just before midnight. Rescue crews illuminated the scene with floodlights before dawn on Wednesday as they searched frantically through the twisted, smoking wreckage for survivors.

Several passengers were thrown through the windows of the train cars by the impact. They said that at least one person fought to free themselves after the passenger train broke down in a field next to the tracks and slammed into a gorge north of Athens.

Vasslis Polyzos was one of the first people on the scene and he said there were a lot of big pieces of steel. Both passenger and freight trains were destroyed.

The Vale of Tempe is a gorge that separates the regions of Thessaly and Macedonia. Costas Agorastos, the regional governor of the Thessaly area, told Greece’s Skai television the two trains crashed head on at high speed.

Rescuers wearing head lamps pulled pieces of mangled metal from cars in thick smoke to search for trapped people. They looked under the crashed field with flashlight. Several of the dead are believed to have been found in the restaurant area near the front of the passenger train.

Vassilis Varthakoyannis, a member of Greece’s firefighting service said the rescue was ongoing and was being carried out in very difficult conditions.

An Ohio train crash in Larissa, Greece, inferred from media: An employee of the Hellenic Train, who was killed by head-on fires, apologized for his actions

A teenager who did not give his name, told reporters that he felt a strong BRAKE before the crash, then saw sparks and a sudden stop.

With hope fading, investigators began asking the same question they had been asking after the Ohio train wreck: What caused it?

Though the trains appeared to be traveling on a double-track line, both trains appeared to be moving on the same track, heading towards each other. The trains collided, head-on, just before midnight local time, as the passenger train was exiting a tunnel under a highway in the municipality of Tempe.

More than 150 firefighters and paramedics are on the scene, said Greek Fire Service spokesperson Vassilis Varthakogiannis in a media briefing. Construction crews are using cranes and construction equipment to move large pieces of steel.

Citing several government sources, ERT reports that more than 66 people were hospitalized, and at least six were still in intensive care as of Wednesday. A total of 130 were injured.

The ERT also reported that the current death toll stands at 36 but is expected to rise as more victims are identified, a task that’s been complicated because temperatures exceeded 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit when fires broke out in the first three carriages.

According to a statement shared in local media, Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned on Wednesday after visiting the crash scene, saying he felt it was his “duty” to step down “as a sign of respect for the memory of the people who died so unjustly.”

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis echoed that statement on Wednesday, saying in a tweet that “we will find out the causes of this tragedy and do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.”

The station master from the city of Larissa, has been charged with manslaughter by negligently operating his station. The 59-year-old Hellenic Train employee denied any wrongdoing, saying the accident may have been a technical failure.

Getting a full picture of what happened may take some time, authorities say. Greek Railroad Workers Union President Yannis Nitsas said that the two drivers of the freight train were among the nine rail employees killed in the crash, reports the Associated Press.

The operator, Hellenic Train, issued a statement that said it was “primary and exclusive concern” to complete the rescue and evacuate process.

Derek Gatopoulos, an AP reporter based in Athens, told NPR’s Up First that the collision is likely to spark a debate around rail safety. It may mirror the one taking place in the U.S. following the aftermath of an Ohio train derailment that sent hazardous materials spilling into the surrounding residential area.

The report from the National Transportation Safety Board stopped short of declaring the cause of the Ohio wreck, but it did raise questions about whether the train’s safety procedures were adequate.

The collision is already raising questions about whether lines, systems and signaling equipment were properly inspected during the sale, Gatopoulos said.

The aftermath of the Larissa train crash: a man’s daughter and his brother in Athens, Greece, who was on board

After a train station manager in Larissa was arrested in connection to the collision, Greek authorities on Thursday made public striking dispatch recordings that show one of the train drivers receiving instructions to ignore a red light.

The country has been roiled by the crash. Hundreds of people from left-wing groups marched on Wednesday to protest train deaths, while train workers went on strike on Thursday over the neglect of the country’s railways.

Police already had a presence outside the Hellenic Train headquarters before the demonstrators arrived. The protest was not violent, just after the unrest on Wednesday.

Protesters gathered outside the central Athens headquarters of Greek rail company Hellenic Train again on Thursday evening in a demonstration organized by student and worker unions.

The identification process for those missing continues at a hospital, causing the relatives of those missing to still be waiting for news.

The son of a man and a brother of a man said no one has given him any information. Bournazis was attempting to locate his relatives who were on the train when it crashed. He said he called the Hellenic Train offices three times but no one called back.

The prime minister and the health minister came here yesterday. Why? What is it that you want to do? To help explain what? Where are they today? “No one has given us any information, no one knows how many people really were inside,” Bournazis told SKAI.

“What we did was to break the glass, which was already cracked, and to throw the luggage outside the carriage, so we can land somewhere soft,” he told ERT, describing how he helped around 10 people escape.

A tragedy unfolded in Greece: the train fatality rate per million rail kilometers of Greece is the highest in Europe, says the French federation of railway workers

Greece has a weak record of railway passenger safety compared with other countries in Europe, recording the highest railway fatality rate per million train kilometers from 2018 to 2020 among 28 nations on the continent, according to a 2022 report from the European Union Agency for Railways.

In an extraordinary meeting, the Greek federation of rail workers decided unanimously to launch the 24-hour strike on Thursday to highlight poor working conditions and chronic understaffing.

It accused the federal government of disrespecting railways for causing the crash, as well as putting more permanent staff and better training in the bin.

The Greek railway system was not up to the 21st century standards that the government had inherited, as he stepped down from his role Wednesday.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke on television, saying that the crash was due to tragic human error.

The resignations of the heads of the Hellenic Railways Organization and ER GOSE were honorable, and he said the transport minister’s resignation was honorable.

The statement from Charles and his wife, the Queen consort, said they were most shocked and devastated by the news of the accident.

My thoughts are with the families of the victims of the terrible accident that took place last night. France stands alongside the Greeks.”

Associated Press: Construction material on a freight train from Greece’s carnival to Greece in late January/early December 1921 to mid-February

Many of the passengers were students returning from Carnival, a three-day festival that precedes the religious season of Lent, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile Greece’s public media agency, ERT, reported that the freight train likely carried construction material, such as heavy steel plates.