"Passengers were jumping into space, I don't know what happened to these people" describes Evdokia Tsagli
Terror, panic, agony. Evdokia Tsagli tries to find the right words to describe her feelings and the time of terror on the death train in Tempi, her body seriously injured by the over-effort she made to free herself from the wreckage. She was travelling in coach 3 of train IC62 along with her friends. They were among the lucky ones who managed to escape through a solid mass of ironwork with the flames "scraping" their bodies.
On the ten-minute train ride to death, nothing foreshadowed the horrors that would follow. "I was in carriage three, and there was another girl in it with her cat. We were walking her cat up and down and playing with her. We were laughing. How can we imagine what would happen a few minutes later?".
On the ten-minute train ride to death, nothing foreshadowed the horrors that would follow. "I was in carriage 3, and there was another girl in it with her cat. We were walking her cat up and down and playing with her. We were laughing. How can we imagine what would happen a few minutes later?".
Evdokia Tsagli on Big Brother Greece Season 7 2021
Screams and shouts were heard everywhere, only a few who managed to keep their cool. "It immediately catches fire and I feel the flames on me. My hair is on fire," Evdokia Tsagli continues to describe.
Panic is too small a word to describe what happened in carriage 3 immediately after the collision. The only thing certain says Evdokia Tsagli, is that survival instinct worked. "We were looking for a way to get off the wagon. Suddenly we find a way out through the debris and then realise that the distance separating us from the ground was equivalent to two floors of an apartment building. What had happened? Another wagon was under ours."
In their panic, some passengers started jumping into the void without calculating the distance. "They were flying and then we didn't hear voices. I don't know what happened to these people. Did they survive? Were they injured and passed out? I honestly don't know."
Then the young woman came to a dilemma: "I had to decide whether to burn or break my bones by jumping out into the unknown, in order to save myself," she explains.
Evdokia's Instagram post April 2020 captioned: Heaven is a cheek on earth 🐾🧸
"I choose to jump, but try to reduce the height. I literally clung to the outer surfaces of the wagon, as long as I could at least hold on and then threw my jacket down to fall on it to reduce the risk of falling. Unfortunately, I fell on a stone and broke my pelvis."
Those who managed to follow her were also injured but because of the adrenaline, which leads to an immediate physical reaction, they felt no pain. "We got up and started running without knowing where we were going. We just ran and gave each other courage, thanking God that we are alive" concludes Evdokia Tsagli.