Shock in Lisbon while three years from the funicular wreckage

There is a feeling of palpable shock on the faces of people who come together on the site of a major funeral accident in the Portuguese capital when they hear how a three -year -old German boy was removed from the wreck – a lucky survivor of the terrible Wednesday crash that killed 16 people.

The boy’s father was said to have been killed and his mother injured in the accident. It is still not known what caused the accident, in which more than 20 other people were injured, including many foreign nationals.

The public transport operator of the capital, Carris, said that all the funiculars would be inspected and that it had launched an independent investigation into the incident.

Police and prosecutors also investigate the accident.

A local resident told the BBC that she “always treated” what had happened when she was passing the accident site, where the wreck of the funicular which had derailed and crushed in a building was on the ground.

“It’s very, very sad,” she said.

Others gathered and took pictures of the wreckage, or looked silently. Two tourists from Singapore said they had been planned to set up the funicular on Wednesday but had changed their plans at the last minute.

“It’s frightening … Who knows, we could have been on it,” said one of them. “This changes your point of view on life. You don’t expect something like it.”

Mariana Figueiredo tourism guide was among the people at the scene of the accident on Wednesday evening. She said she had been traumatized by what she had witnessed.

Ms. Figueiredo said he heard a big accident and rushed to the scene, near the place where her tuktuk was parked.

“In five seconds, I was there,” she said. “People started jumping from windows inside the funicular at the bottom of the hill. Then, I saw another (higher) which was already crushed.

“I started to climb the hill to help people, but when I got to, the only thing I could hear was silence.”

Figueiredo said that when she and others started to remove the roof from the funicular, they saw corpses inside.

She said that she had seen children save herself and tried to help people with broken bones and calm those who distress them.

“Many people were crying around me. They were very afraid. I was trying to calm them down.”

A man, who was on another funicular at the bottom of the hill at the time of the accident, told journalists that he thought he was going to die.

“No matter how many years I live, I will never take over the funicular again,” he said.

Police did not officially appoint any of the dead or injured, but said on Thursday at a press conference that they believed that two Canadians, a German and a Ukrainian national were considered to be among the dead.

This results from a previous update in which the police said they believed that five Portuguese, two South Koreans and a Swiss national had been identified.

The Portuguese Transport Union said that the Funicular Brakes André Jorge Gonçalves Marques were one of these Killad.

The charitable organization Santa Casa da Misericórdia, whose employees used the funicular for their work trip, confirmed that four of their workers had been killed in the accident.

An employee, Valdemar Bastos, told the BBC that the staff of the charitable organization, located at the top of a steep hill, often used funicular with tourists and the elderly.

“I have always felt safe,” he said. “I never thought it could happen.”

On Thursday, the head of the Lisbon public transport operator, Carris, said that all the city’s funiculars are closed until technical inspections have been carried out.

Pedro Gonçalo by Brito Aleixo Bogas told journalists that the Gloria line would reopen in the future with a new car.

He said that the company had increased its expenses to maintain funicular – which had worked properly since 2007 – but added that the cost of maintenance had more than doubled in the past 10 years.

The survey results would soon be published, said Dr. de Brito Bogas, but refused to say when it would happen.

Shared images on social networks have shown that the crumpled yellow funicular overturned on the paved street and the people who run from the region while smoke filled the air.

Several passengers trapped in the wreckage had to be released by the emergency stakeholders, local authorities said.

Lisbon officials initially took stock at 17, but this number was then revised at 16 after discovering that a person who died in the hospital had been counted twice.

A funicular is a type of rail system that allows you to browse the steep slopes, and in Lisbon, they are a crucial means of navigating in the steep and paved streets of the city.

Funicular railways of the city – Glória, Lavra, Bica and Graça – are a popular tourist attraction, while vehicles in the shape of a bright yellow tram snake in the streets often narrow and hilly.

Glória was opened in 1885 and electrified three decades later.

It travels approximately 275 m (900 feet) of restarades, a square in the central city, to the picturesque streets of Bairro Alto. The trip only takes three minutes.

The two cars on the Glória road are fixed at the opposite ends of a transport cable, which is driven by electric motors.

While a car moves downhill, its weight lifts the other, allowing them to climb and descend simultaneously, reducing the energy necessary to transport them.

The second intact car could be seen a few meters from the wreck at the bottom of the hill.