Tempi train crash
On 28 February 2023, a head-on collision occurred between two trains south of the Tempe Valley in Greece, about halfway between the Greek villages of Tempi and Evangelismos in the Thessaly region. The collision, follow-up derailment and fireball that ensued involving the InterCity 62 passenger train operated by Hellenic Train and an intermodal freight train, killed 57, heavily injured 81 and lightly injured 99 people. The estimated number of people were 352 on the passenger train including 10 staff, and 2 staff on the freight train totalling 354 people on both trains. It is the most serious railway accident in Europe since 2013, when a train derailment in Santiago de Compostela killed 79 people.
Vigils, angry protests, and clashes with the police [|occurred throughout Greece] following the crash. Beginning on 2 March 2023, railway workers of Hellenic Train and the Athens Metro went on strike to protest the dangerous conditions related to the crash. Following the crash, Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, taking responsibility for the crash and for his failure to bring Greek railways to 21st-century standards. However, he was reelected after standing for office just two months after the incident.
The investigation has so far implicated 43 state officials – those directly responsible for the accident, such as the station master and Hellenic Train officials, but also those who failed to carry out the necessary upgrades to the system. Accusations have also been made against officials from the Ministry of Infrastructure who manipulated the site of the accident with "landfilling" that followed the completion of the rescue operation. However, the trial is still a long way off, with hundreds of petitions pending for the investigating judge to consider. The development of the investigation process has been closely followed by the Greek press, while private investigations by the relatives of the victims and through independent institutional bodies, such as the bar associations, collecting evidence to support the criminal accusations, has been an unprecedented phenomenon for Greek society.
Incident
On Tuesday 28 February 2023, the InterCity 62 passenger train, consisting of an electric locomotive and 8 carriages, departed from Athens railway station at 19:30 EET with Thessaloniki railway station as its final destination. The train carried 431 passengers, most of them students in their20s returning after the long weekend of Carnival celebrations and Clean Monday.At 21:00, freight train number 63593 consisting of two electric wagons and 13 flatcars loaded with sheet steel and shipping containers – with a total weight of 618 t and a length of 259 m – departed from Thessaloniki, bound for the OSE freight station at the Thriasio plain.
Upon the arrival of the IC 62 at Palaiofarsalos station the service was interrupted for almost an hour after a fault in the electrification system forced it to wait for its repair. This fault was one of the causes of the accident as it forced the station master to make constant track changes.
The train departed from Palaiofarsalos station at 22:40 moving until its entrance to the Larissa railway station area, on the southbound track as only on this track the electrification had been restored. Just before the train entered Larissa station, the switchman returned the train to its correct, northbound track. The train disembarked 82 passengers and departed at 23:04, with a delay of 48 minutes.
In order for the train to reach the next station, Neoi Poroi, three points had to be set to straight ahead. The stationmaster successfully set the first point, but missed the next two. Specifically, the tracks remained in the diverted position as they had been placed to accommodate the movement of the previous suburban passenger train 2597, which was operating on the Larissa–Thessaloniki line. As a result, the passenger train left the correct line and at about 23:06–23:07 entered the opposite line, where the freight train was already located. The stationmaster, believing he had made the necessary turnouts, gave the locomotive driver movement authority towards Neoi Poroi, while ordering him to ignore the color light signal as it was out of order permanently. The driver of the passenger train realised that he was on the southbound track and requested a repeat of the instruction. The instruction was repeated and the course continued.
For 12 minutes and 18 kilometres the freight train, which was travelling at a speed of 90 km/h and the passenger train, which was travelling at a speed of approximately 150 km/h, were running on the same line until at 23:20, at the height of Evangelismos, both trains collided head on.
Crash
The head-on collision between the two locomotives caused them to derail and be diverted. The two locomotives of the freight train were thrown to the left and hit the wall of the adjacent A1 motorway, while the passenger locomotive and the first coach were deflected off the tracks and crashed to the ground, completely destroyed.The other wagons continued to move, but activation of the brakes significantly reduced their speed. Immediately afterwards, the wagon restaurant collides head-on with the front of the platform carrying the sheet metal. The wagon is deformed into an S-shape and lands on the wreckage of the locomotive and the first wagon, which together have been reduced to an amorphous mass.
This is followed by the derailment of the third wagon in the line, which hits the ground, bends and is cut into two pieces, with the rear end lifting up and hitting the fourth wagon.
At the moment of collision, when the electrified carriages hit the traction current pylon along the track, two electric explosions are generated. The first one when the locomotive of the passenger train collides with the pylon of the descending line, the second and bigger one when the electric freight locomotive collides with the pylon of the ascending line.
Sparks appear to have ignited spilt liquid fuel and created the initial fireball. This fireball, which lasted for 2 seconds and was on its way to dissipation, was refuelled by a second fuel release, which renewed and fed the fireball for a further 4 seconds, doubling the size of the phenomenon. The fireball created a very large heat load for the structures and occupants within its radiating area.
After the fireball is extinguished, three pool type fires continue their destructive work. The first fire breaks out near the locomotives of the freight train, fueled by silicone oil spilt around, and burns at low intensity for an unknown amount of time. The second fire flares up underneath the dining car, consuming the last remaining fuel in the fireball, and fed by other fuels such as silicone oil from the engines, it continues to burn with great intensity for about an hour. This fire became so intense in the first 30 minutes that the first attempt to extinguish it at 00:02 by a single fire engine had little to no effect. The third fire broke out from an unknown source under carriage. Initially of low intensity, it burned the 16-metre-long car to the ground in 40 minutes.
"Flash fire" debate
The cause of the formation of the flash fire and the subsequent fires is still under investigation, as opinions differ.According to the findings of the Hellenic Fire Service, Hellenic Train and the forensic experts who investigated the scene of the accident at the request of the prosecutor, fireball was caused by the second electric arc, which ignited the silicone oils in the transformers of the two locomotives, which leaked into the environment. Specifically, it is claimed that the fire that broke out immediately after the collision of the trains, was caused by the electrical discharges generated by the cutting of the power cables of the electric locomotives with a nominal voltage of 25,000 volts, combined with the spraying of the cooling oil of the power transformers of the locomotives generated during the collision.
This reason has been disputed by technical advisers to the victims' families, who claim that silicone oils are difficult to ignite. When the results of the "General Chemical State Laboratory"'s analysis of samples from the crash site, which indicated the presence of xylene and toluene in the soil, became known, the findings of the technical consultants pointed to an unknown fuel that was secretly transported to the commercial train, leaked, ignited and created the fireball. This view seems to be shared by HARSIA. According to them, the sparks created by the emergency brake ignited liquid spilled fuel. Although the nature of the fuel has not been ascertained, the form of the initial ignition and the formation of the fireball suggest that it was a liquid volatile fuel of about 2,5 tonnes. HARSIA points out that the immediate filling of the site destroyed evidence to such an extent that the identification of the fuel is in doubt. However, it has not yet completed its investigation in this respect.
Causes of the fatality
According to the official conclusion of the competent state authority, the accident was caused by the decision of the stationmaster of Larissa to use the manual setting of route instead of the automated one. In doing so, he "forgot" to return two points he had previously moved to the correct track. As a result of this mistake, the passenger train went onto the wrong track, resulting in a collision with the freight train. The mistake went unnoticed by the stationmaster.The failure of the drivers of passenger trains to react as they should have when they realized that they were on the descending line is also considered a causal factor.
The following two factors have been identified as important:
Rescue operation – casualties
In an interview with ERT, the governor of the Thessaly region, Kostas Agorastos, reported that the first four carriages of the passenger train were derailed, and the first two carriages caught fire and were "almost completely destroyed". Passengers reportedly escaped the train through windows that were either broken in the crash or in their attempt to escape. Many panicked and some were trapped in carriages that were tilted at least 45degrees. Rescuers were able to open some of the car doors. The force of the impact was able to completely destroy the locomotive of the passenger train while the locomotives of the freight train were pushed against the freight cars they were towing.Two minutes after the accident, at 23:24, the first call for help was received by 112 from a passenger. At 23:40, the Hellenic Fire Service arrives on the scene with 40 firefighters and 17 vehicles, followed 10 minutes later by 4 ambulances and a mobile unit with a doctor, while hospitals in the area were alerted to be ready to receive victims. By dawn on 1 March 32 bodies had been recovered and 85 injured had been taken to hospital.
| Group age | Number |
| 15–25 | 23 |
| 26–35 | 12 |
| 36–46 | 3 |
| 46+ | 16 |
Around 150 firefighters, including members of the Special Disaster Response Unit ' and the Special Forest Operations Unit ', were deployed to the scene with 17 vehicles and 4 cranes, while the National Emergency Aid Centre sent 30 ambulances. The main effort in finding and rescuing the survivors was made by crane, as the first two passenger cars – which had overturned and fallen on top of each other, trapping the passengers inside – had to be separated and removed to allow the firefighters to get inside. The rescue operation was completed on 3 March, following a thorough search of the site and the recovery of the last of the biological material to facilitate identification. Autopsies and DNA identification of the victims was started on 1 March by a team of forensic experts assisted by members of the Hellenic Police Forensic Science Division.
According to Hellenic Railways, it is estimated that there were 342 passengers and 10 staff on board the passenger train and two staff on board the service train on this part of the route. Of the seven coaches of the passenger train, most of the dead were in the the canteen of the train, followed by the passengers in the in order of connection, the in order of connection and 2 dead in the.
The sole survivor of the first carriage is 21-year-old Gerasimos, who was ejected from the carriage during the crash and discovered in a coma in a nearby field. Despite being treated at specialized brain injury rehabilitation facilities in Hanover, Boston, and Milan, as of January 2026 he remains in a coma. The greatest damage, primarily due to the fire caused by the explosion, occurred in the . This carriage not only derailed and landed in the fields next to the tracks but was also crushed by the third carriage. According to the fire brigade spokesman, the passengers were "crushed by the wagons and then set on fire". The most typical case of injury suffered by passengers on this particular carriage is that of three 19-year-old girls from Kalabaka. The two twin sisters and their cousin, who were travelling by train for the first time, found themselves at the center of the resulting "fireball". The three girls were identified through DNA testing after their bodies were dematerialized due to the high temperatures. The same family had also lost five relatives in a previous mass casualty disaster, the Mati fire in 2018.
A total of 32 of the victims were identified through DNA. In the third carriage,, 9 people were killed, most of them from the front of the carriage, while 4 who were thrown from the carriage managed to survive. In coach, there were only 2 casualties as a result of the derailment, but the smoke inhalation caused serious respiratory problems for the passengers.
| Nationality | Number |
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