The authorities in Portugal opened investigations on Thursday into the crash of a vintage Lisbon funicular as the death toll rose to 17.
The funicular is one of Lisbon’s most popular tourist attractions, and local officials said that the dead included passengers with foreign and Portuguese surnames, though the victims’ nationalities were not clear. The authorities added that at least 21 other people were injured in the crash early Wednesday evening.
The vehicle lost control as it was traveling down a steep slope in the center of Lisbon, Portugal’s hilly capital. Although some local news outlets initially reported that a cable had most likely come loose, citing firefighters, other authorities have not confirmed the cause of the accident.
The government declared a national day of mourning.
The ride on the funicular, called the Elevador da Glória, typically lasts only a few minutes and transports passengers to and from the scenic Bairro Alto. The accident happened just after 6 p.m., when one of the two yellow and white carriages hurtled into a building.
Rescuers rushed to the crash site, a cobblestone street lined with street art and pastel buildings, and took the victims and injured to local hospitals. Among the dead was the driver, André Jorge Gonçalves Marques, the Portuguese transport workers’ union said in a Facebook post.
Visitors usually wait in long lines to board the funicular. Each of the two vehicles on the line can carry about 40 people.
Most of the injured were foreign nationals, Margarida Castro Martins, the director of Lisbon’s civil protection agency said at a news conference on Thursday. They included Canadian, French, German, Moroccan, Spanish and Swiss nationals, she said. An Italian woman suffered a broken arm in the crash, a spokeswoman for the Italian Foreign Ministry said.
The Portuguese forensics institute was performing autopsies overnight. The institute’s director, Francisco Corte Real, told reporters on Wednesday that investigators planned to identify all the victims by Thursday morning so that families could be informed. He added that medical examiners had traveled from other parts of the country to help with the autopsies.
As the authorities searched for the cause of the accident, the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, ordered the suspension of operations at the city’s other funiculars, including the popular Elevador da Bica. He also requested technical inspections of all funicular equipment.
The roof of the carriage lay sideways beside a jumble of metal pieces and broken wooden seats after the crash.
Several Portuguese agencies have opened investigations, according to Ms. Castro Martins. They included the public security police, the criminal investigation division, and the aircraft and railway accident prevention and investigation office.
The Lisbon public transport company, Carris, said in a statement that all maintenance protocols had been followed. It said that general maintenance, which is scheduled to take place every four years, was last performed in 2022 and that an interim checkup was done in 2024. The company added that weekly and daily inspections had been performed.
Carris said that it had also immediately opened an investigation into what happened.
Tiago Carrasco and Daniela Ferreira Pinto contributed reporting from Lisbon.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
The post Portugal Searches for Cause of Funicular Crash as Death Toll Rises appeared first on New York Times.
