Lisbon funicular railway crash leaves at least 15 dead, over a dozen injured
On Wednesday, at least 15 people were killed and 18 were injured in an accident in a popular funeral railway in Lisbon, Portugal, according to local authorities.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro expressed condolences to the victims in a statement and said that an investigation was launched to determine the cause of the accident.
The mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, announced three days of mourning “for the victims of the tragic accident” on X.
A video published on social networks and verified by NBC News showed a yellow funicular car lying on the side of debris dispersed with the open roof. A separate video checked by NBC News showed that people were rummaging through the twisted metal of the wreckage.
The funicular that crashed, the Elevador of Glória, connects the square restradores to the Jardim of São Pedro de Alcântara in the district of Bairro Alto. There are two other funicular railways in the city, according to a site managed by the Lisbon Tourism Association.
Lisbon firefighters’ commander, Alexandre Rodrigues, told a group of journalists that they had been alerted to the derailment at 6 p.m. and arrived in the three minutes.
The funicular car “derailed, crashed in the building, and now the causes will have to be analyzed by the competent authorities,” he said, noting that there was no confirmation of the nationalities of the people killed and injured.
Carris, the company that operates the funicular, said in a statement on Wednesday that “all maintenance protocols had been made and respected” and that the latest repairs were carried out in 2024.
Manuel Leal, head of the Federation of Unions of Transport and Communications Workers (FECTRANS) and the Union of Road and Urban Transport Workers of Portugal (STRUP), said on Wednesday that Carris workers had made “repeated complaints” concerning the need to maintain funicular cars, according to the Portuguese state agency, Lusa.
“There must be an investigation into the deep causes of this accident, in particular because workers have long reported that the maintenance of these cars should be the responsibility of Carris workers and not outsourced to external companies, as is the case with the Lifting of Glória,” he said.
