Brakeman confirmed among the dead as investigation begins into funicular crash

The death toll in the crash of a famous Lisbon funicular popular with tourists rose to 17 on Thursday after two of the 23 injured people died, an emergency services official said.

The dead were all adults, Margarida Castro Martins, head of Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency, told reporters. She did not provide their names or nationalities, saying that their families would be informed first.

Another 21 people were injured in Wednesday’s crash, she said, adding that they were men and women between the ages of 24 and 65 as well as a three-year-old child.

They included Portuguese people as well as two Germans, two Spaniards and one person each from France, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Morocco, South Korea and Cape Verde, she said.

The range of nationalities reflected how big a draw the renowned funicular was for tourists who pack the Portuguese capital during the summer season.

Portugal observed a national day of mourning Thursday after the capital’s worst disaster in recent history.

Though authorities gave no details about those killed, the transport workers’ trade union, Sitra, said that the streetcar’s brakeman, Andre Marques, was among the dead.

Felicity Ferriter, a 70-year-old British tourist, had just arrived with her husband at a hotel near the crash site and was unpacking her suitcase when she heard “a horrendous crash”.

“We heard it, we heard the bang,” she told The Associated Press outside her hotel.

The couple had seen the streetcar when they arrived and intended to ride on it the next day.

“It was to be one of the highlights of our holiday,” she said. “It could have been us.”

She said the emergency response was “amazing”, and that police and ambulances had quickly “flooded in”.

The 19th-century funicular is one of Lisbon’s big tourist attractions and is usually packed with foreigners at this time of year for its short and picturesque trip up and down one of the city’s steep hills.

Teams of pathologists at the national forensics institute, reinforced by colleagues from three other Portuguese cities, worked through the night on autopsies, officials said.

The injured were admitted to several hospitals in the Lisbon region.

The funicular’s crumpled wreckage was still on the road where it crashed on Thursday, cordoned off by police.

Detectives from Portugal’s judicial police force, which investigates serious incidents, photographed the rails and the wreckage on the deserted road.

Officials declined to speculate on whether a faulty brake or a snapped cable may have caused the derailment.

The yellow-and-white streetcar, known as Elevador da Gloria, was lying on its side on the narrow road that it travels on, its sides and top crumpled. It crashed into a building where the road bends, leaving parts of the mostly metal vehicle crushed.

“It hit the building with brutal force and fell apart like a cardboard box,” witness Teresa d’Avp told the Portuguese television channel SIC.

She described the funicular as out of control and seeming to have no brakes, and said she watched passers-by run into the middle of the nearby Avenida da Liberdade, or Freedom Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare.

The crash occurred at the start of the evening rush hour, around 6pm local time. Emergency officials said all victims were pulled out of the wreckage in just over two hours.

The funicular is harnessed by steel cables and can carry more than 40 people, seated and standing. It is also commonly used by Lisbon residents.

The service, inaugurated in 1885, goes up and down a few hundred metres of hill on a curved, traffic-free road in tandem with one going the opposite way. It goes between between Restauradores Square and the Bairro Alto neighbourhood renowned for its nightlife.

Lisbon’s city council halted operations of three other famous funicular streetcars in the city while immediate inspections were carried out.

The Elevador da Gloria is classified as a national monument.

Lisbon hosted about 8.5 million tourists last year, and long lines of people typically form for the brief rides on the popular attraction.

Carris, the company that operates the streetcar, said that scheduled maintenance had been carried out.

It offered its deepest condolences to the victims and their families in a social media post, and promised that all due diligence would be taken in finding the causes.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa offered his condolences to affected families, and Lisbon mayor Carlos Moedas said the city was in mourning. “It’s a tragedy of the like we’ve never seen,” Mr Moedas said.

Portugal’s government announced that a day of national mourning would be observed on Thursday.

“A tragic accident … caused the irreparable loss of human life, which left in mourning their families and dismayed the whole country,” it said in a statement.

European Union flags at the European Parliament and European Commission in Brussels flew at half-staff. Multiple EU leaders expressed their condolences on social media.