Mabel and her daughter, two Spanish tourists, narrowly avoided the derailment of the Elevador da Glória in Lisbon last Wednesday. They were about to board the funicular when the daughter decided against it due to the crowd inside.
“My daughter told me, ‘Mom, let’s not get on this one because there are too many people standing. Let’s wait for the next,'” the mother recounted to the Spanish radio station Cadena SER.
“She was the one who said she didn’t want to go on that tram. She didn’t want to stand, and now we can tell the story,” she emphasized.
Mabel described standing at the “tram stop on the slope” when they saw the “first tram moved back a few meters.”
“People started exiting through the window, and suddenly, we heard a screeching sound,” she recounted. “What we didn’t expect was what came from above. We looked up and saw the cabin approaching at an alarming speed.”
The funicular ended up “hitting the curve against the building, which stopped it,” and the Spanish tourist considered that “if it hadn’t, it would have been catastrophic, as it would have reached the middle of the street.”
In a matter of seconds, the scene turned into a “pile of iron” amid “smoke and dust, making it difficult to see for those nearby. “We all started running downhill… People were pushing us. It was very impressive,” she recalled.
The Elevador da Glória, situated in the heart of Lisbon, derailed at 6:04 p.m. on Wednesday at the Calçada da Glória.
The accident resulted in 16 fatalities and over 20 injuries.
This Friday, the Polícia Judiciária (PJ) announced that “the nationalities of the 16 fatalities” from the accident have been “scientifically identified, with the cooperation of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.”
Among the fatalities were five Portuguese, two South Koreans, one Swiss, three British, two Canadians, one Ukrainian, one American, and one French national.
Among those injured and taken to the hospital were at least ten different nationalities: four Portuguese, two Germans, two Spaniards, one Korean, one Cape Verdean, one Canadian, one Italian, one French, one Swiss, and one Moroccan. These consisted of 12 women and seven men, aged between 24 and 65.
The Consulate of Brazil in Portugal also reported two injured Brazilians in the accident. At a press conference, the executive director of the National Health Service (SNS), Álvaro Santos Almeida, indicated that they were two men, one of whom resides in Portugal.
There are still six injured people hospitalized at São José and Santa Maria hospitals, and according to the health units, their health status remained unchanged overnight.
At São José Hospital, four injured individuals remain: one stays in intensive care, and three are “in controlled situations.” At Santa Maria Hospital, there are two people, one in intensive care and another in the emergency observation service.
Three patients continue to be hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit of São Francisco Xavier Hospital in stable condition, according to a hospital source.
