For a quarter of a century, 3 large-scale tragedies occurred near Tempi

After the deadly clash in Tempi, two more tragedies “remembered”: in 1999 and in 2003. Both of them took place in the same area and shocked Greece.

The first happened in October 1999 when a bus full of PAOK fans collided with a truck. As a result of the tragic incident, six people died and many were injured. The driver of the truck that the bus collided with also died. This happened 2 km before the toll booth in Tempi. 77 fans of the “Two-Headed North” were seated in a double-decker tourist bus, the driver of which tried to overtake the vehicle in front, but … He ended up in the oncoming lane and collided with a truck heading for Larisa. The bus overturned and crashed into an eight-meter ravine.

The second tragedy occurred on April 13, 2003, in which 21 high school students died. The bus with students of the 1st Lyceum was returning from a trip to Makrohori Imatia. Not far from Tempi, a truck carrying construction material – neopan and melamine – collided head-on with a bus. It all happened on the 338th km of the Larisa-Thessaloniki national road. Some of the neopan and melamine fell on the road, some on the bus, and the body of the truck literally “cut” the fateful bus with schoolchildren in two.

As a result of a terrible accident, 21 sixteen-year-old teenagers died, 9 more were injured. An investigation was underway, but so far the causes of the incident have not been established. According to the information found out during the investigation, the driver drove for six hours without a break, and his tires were in poor condition. The bus was declared unfit for transportation due to its age – at least three months before the tragedy, it should have been withdrawn …

But there is an earlier tragedy, which also happened near Larissa, in Doxaras. It happened on January 16, 1972, when two passenger trains collided head-on between Sirota Karditsa and Dokhara stations in Larisa. 19 people died and 44 were injured. The Acropolis Express train on the Munich-Athens route collided with a “slow” train of the time, making many stops, from Athens to Thessaloniki: