As investigators hunted for the cause of a funicular crash in Lisbon that killed 16 people on Wednesday, a lawyer for the company that maintained it said on Friday that the system had passed inspection hours before the wreck.
Though officials have not said anything yet about what caused one car of the funicular to barrel uncontrolled down a steep slope, speculation has focused on a failure of the underground cable that connected the two cars.
A video of the wreckage, shown on Portuguese television on Thursday night showed workers extracting from beneath the road a cable that appeared shredded.
Ricardo Serrano Vieira, a lawyer for Mntc, the maintenance company, confirmed in a WhatsApp message on Friday night that the funicular underwent inspection Wednesday morning and was given the all-clear. It was not clear how detailed that inspection was, or whether something was missed.
Many other questions remain, including why emergency brakes did not stop the car’s rapid descent.
“Everything points to a break in the mooring cable of the funicular,” said Mário Vaz, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Porto.
He said that usually, funiculars have two emergency brake systems. One is engaged by the driver, and an automatic one is supposed to activate if the cable breaks.
One of the agencies involved in the investigation said it would issue a statement on its first findings on Saturday.
The funicular, the Elevador da Glória, was a popular emblem of the hilly city. The system took commuters and tourists up and down a steep cobblestone lane, and had operated in various forms since 1885. The bright yellow cars of the Elevador da Glória could each carry about 40 people.
It was operated by Carris, the Lisbon public transport company. The company’s president, Pedro Bogas, said at a news conference on Thursday that maintenance of the funicular had been outsourced since at least 2007, and Mntc, a private Portuguese engineering company, has held that contract since 2019.
The two cars of a funicular act as counterweights to each other, one climbing as the other descends, and are linked by a cable that runs through a pulley at the top of the hill.
Witnesses said that on Wednesday evening, the car headed uphill came to a sudden halt a few yards from the bottom of its route, then fell back to the starting block, injuring some of its passengers. At the same time, the car headed downhill appeared to become untethered a few yards from the top, leading to a much longer, disastrous free fall. Where the route curves, it jumped off its tracks and smashed against a building.
On Friday, Portugal’s judicial police disclosed the nationalities of the victims, who included one American, five Portuguese, two South Koreans, one Swiss, three Britons, two Canadians, one Ukrainian and one French person. Medical examiners completed the autopsies of the victims on Thursday, but the authorities have not released their identities.
Quebec’s minister of culture and communications, Mathieu Lacombe, on social media identified the two Canadian victims as Blandine Daux and André Bergeron, specialists in restoring archaeological artifacts.
The victims included the driver of the car heading downhill, André Jorge Gonçalves Marques, the Portuguese transport workers’ union said. The Lisbon volleyball association said Pedro Trindade, a former player and referee, also died in the crash. Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a prominent charitable organization in Portugal, said four people who worked there were also among the victims.
“We will do everything so that from this tragic event we learn all the safety improvements to avoid similar accidents in the future, so that at least the sacrifice of these victims is not in vain,” Nelson Rodrigues de Oliveira, the director general of the Portuguese office that investigates crashes in civil aviation and rail, said at a news conference on Thursday night.
“I know this is of small consolation,” he added. “But that’s what we work for, so that from these unfortunate events lessons are retrieved so it doesn’t happen again.”
In 2018, the funicular derailed without causing injuries, as the cable held and prevented an uncontrolled descent. A car “simply came off the tracks and landed on the cobblestones,” the Portuguese newspaper Público wrote at the time. Carris described the cause of the derailment as “a technical issue.”
On Thursday, Carris said in a statement that all maintenance protocols had been followed before the latest crash.
By Friday evening, workers had removed the tangled metal and splintered wood of the destroyed car from the scene.
Mourners have left flowers there, and on Thursday night, a tribute ceremony was held at São Domingos church in Lisbon. The Roman Catholic patriarch of Lisbon, Rui Manuel Sousa Valério, said in a homily that “there has always been a relationship of trust between man and machine,” explaining that humans use machines for transportation, agriculture and other complex tasks.
“But yesterday,” he said, “the machine betrayed us.”
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
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