“This meeting took place in a very calm environment […] it is indeed the tone and character required to assess a tragedy of this scale, away from electoral gains and partisan issues. Calmness is needed. Truly, the tragedy remains a matter for us to understand. What happened should not have occurred, but now we are committed to trying to understand what took place, and this commitment is total, in an already more tranquil context,” stated the deputy mayor, Filipe Anacoreta Correia (CDS-PP).
The deputy mayor of Lisbon spoke at the end of an extraordinary meeting to update information about the Glória lift accident, held at the request of the opposition, which wanted it to be on September 25.
However, the municipal executive president, Carlos Moedas (PSD), decided to schedule it for today, the day after the local elections, “to avoid politicizing an issue that warrants technical clarifications.”
The derailment of the Glória lift, managed by the municipal company Carris, occurred on September 3 and resulted in 16 fatalities and 20 injuries, involving both Portuguese and foreigners of various nationalities.
Advocating for a stance of full transparency and explanation regarding the accident, PS councilor Pedro Anastácio criticized the PSD/CDS-PP leadership, as well as Carris, for “a stance of bottling up, of not releasing information,” considering that “this is negative because it hinders the restoration of the city, the city’s confidence in Carris’ public transport infrastructures.”
Regarding new information on the Glória lift, including two previous accidents that were not properly recorded by Carris, the deputy mayor assured that “nobody wanted to cover them up or fail to bring them to public,” explaining that those incidents were due to human error and “bear no relation” to the scale of the September 3 accident, “which pertains to structural issues of the lifts’ safety.”
“From Carris and the City Hall, there’s a total commitment to clarify everything related to understanding what happened. Nobody is on the defense or worried about covering up or withholding information, but in managing a very difficult situation resulting from an accident that left us all very disturbed, there might be communication failures,” explained Anacoreta Correia, emphasizing the total commitment to understanding what happened “to prevent it from happening again.”
For the socialist Pedro Anastácio, the duty of the Lisbon City Hall “was to immediately end this controversy” with “a thorough clarification of it.”
“We regret that this was not the option,” noted the PS councilor.
Regarding alerts about the lift’s functioning, Pedro Anastácio said the information conveyed was “generic related to maintenance, and never specific to the Glória lift.”
“Many aspects still need clarification, namely understanding what happened and what failed,” insisted the socialist, awaiting the final report on the accident to understand what failed, who failed, and who is responsible.
PCP councilor Ana Jara stated that “this meeting, in a way, had no effect,” pointing out that “a thorough clarification” about the communist proposal to assess the lifts’ conservation state, including maintenance outsourcing, and the study of tourist load was not provided.
Paula Marques from Citizens for Lisbon (elected by the PS/Livre coalition) noted that “there weren’t precisely significant clarifications,” referring to several unanswered questions by PSD/CDS-PP, particularly about Carris’ responsibility in managing the maintenance company.
Also, Livre councilor Carlos Teixeira, substituting for Rui Tavares, expressed dissatisfaction with the clarifications, particularly regarding “issues related to the past, present, and future of this whole situation,” emphasizing the elevator modernization process.
