“My phone rang around 11:30 pm. It was Antonis, he called me from an unknown number. Tell me “Dad had a terrible accident. I’m trapped and all I see around me is flames.”

Giorgos Katehakis heard his son talking to him on the other end of the line and tried his best to remain calm. His child was in danger and he was – miles away – all he could do was give him strength, as much strength as his father could muster at that moment.

His 22-year-old son, a third-year student at TEFAA AUTH, rode on Tuesday evening with the fateful Athens-Thessaloniki train. His ticket was in the second car at seat 95.

“It was only by a miracle that we managed to get out of the first three cars alive,” said those passengers who managed to safely get out of the rear cars of the train. Antonis was among those who miraculously survived. He describes to “K” the dramatic moments he experienced on Tuesday night, on a trip very different from anything he had done before.

“I remember going to the cafeteria for a sandwich. I struck up a conversation with the train workers, who, as always, were very polite and immediately returned to their seats. A few minutes passed when the first “clap” was heard. The young man who was sitting on the opposite seat fell on me and hit me hard in the eye.”

In the next second, he felt another strong blow. “Instinctively, I covered my face with my hands to protect myself. For a while, while my eyes were closed, it seemed to me that we were walking in circles. When I opened them, I saw a flame in front of me.

The moments that followed felt like frames from a movie. “Ahead, I saw flames and debris. I saw burning figures and heard loud screams,” says Antonis “K”. “My first thought was that since I was alive, I should react to save myself. I didn’t want to endure something so as not to hurt my family,” he says.

“The only way out is the window above our house”

“With two passengers I just met, we thought our only way out was through the window above our seat, which had already been smashed. Our first step was to use the lens of a cell phone to see if we were all capable. We were already surrounded by flames and had no choice but to jump. The distance from the window to the ground was about 2.5-3 meters, and from above we could only see a large sheet of metal. We decided to throw all the suitcases down to fall as gently as possible. To shorten the distance, we dangled from the van and jumped. At that time, there were five of us, one girl and four boys. I remember jumping second or third.”

All decisions were made in seconds. One encouraged the other, and in the end, all five children managed to get out of the second car, only with injuries. “Perhaps others followed us, but I don’t know,” says Antonis and describes what followed.

“I walked away from the place of the fall by 100-150 meters. I sat down because I had inhaled smoke and asked the passenger for a phone number so I could call my father and describe to him what had happened. I told him that at that time we did not see any way out to get on the road. However, fortunately, within the next 20 minutes, firefighters arrived and helped us free ourselves.”

“From the moment I saw them, I felt joy and peace”

In the hours that followed, Antonis Katehakis was at the Larissa University Hospital, where he underwent surgery on his right earlobe. He was hospitalized for two nights with blunt trauma to the head, hematoma, and minor burns to his abdomen and arms.

His parents arrived in Greece from Cyprus, where they live permanently, on the first flight on Wednesday morning. Since that time, they are next to their child, trying to understand what happened.

“From the moment I saw them, I feel joy and peace,” a young survivor of the Tempe train accident tells K.

Note: I saw the name of Antonis in the published list of victims and contacted him, as, first of all, we are connected by family ties. He was discharged from the hospital on Thursday afternoon and is now at his apartment in Thessaloniki. It may take a long time to recover from the shock. But he got out of the burning car alive, and this is a real miracle for his family.