On the streets of Lisbon on Thursday, the mood is sombre and residents are still in shock.
Ari Gouveia, a doorman in a nearby building, says he heard the funicular crash occurring on Wednesday evening.
“When I heard the bang, I thought it was a car crash,” he says.
When he heard a second bang he rushed outside.
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“I just saw dust. I didn’t even notice that the one behind had broken apart. There was a colleague standing on the other side, I went there and asked him what happened and he told me the train crashed.
“In the moment, I didn’t feel a lot. Just after that it started to sink in and you start to make sense of what took place.”
Gouveia is Brazilian and has been living here for three years. He feels especially, he says, for the relatives as information begins to emerge about their family members.
“I’ve been through something like that. I have a niece who died in an accident almost two years ago ... We know well how that feels”, he said. “You feel more for the person who stays rather than the one who is gone.”
Authorities have confirmed that the funicular crash killed 16 people and injured 22 others. No Irish people have been identified as killed or injured in the crash as of yet.
The first victim to be identified was André Marques, the streetcar’s brakeman, who was named by the transport workers’ trade union Sitra on Thursday.
His employer Carris – which runs the funicular – says he was a “dedicated, kind and happy professional”.
A German family of three is also reported to have been on board when the funicular crashed. Local media say the father was killed, the mother is in a critical condition in hospital, while their three-year-old boy sustained minor injuries.
Local media also report that a man in his 50s and a woman in her 40s – employees of the charity Santa Casa da Misericódia – were killed.
Portugal’s prosecutor general’s office said coroners had so far identified the bodies of five Portuguese, two South Koreans and one Swiss national, without disclosing further details of those killed.
Authorities said 19 injured were immediately rushed to hospital after the crash, seven of whom were severely injured.
On Wednesday, the plaza at the foot of the streetcar route was busy with tourists on foot, bikes, electric scooters. Many paused to take photos of the scene.
Press cameras have been trained on the site since it crashed at 6pm on Wednesday. Police tape surrounds the bottom of the street and several members of the force patrolled to protect the crash scene.
A team of investigators from the public transport authority of Lisbon has begun to inspect the crash scene.
The second streetcar that travels upwards as the other descends remains at the bottom of the street, slightly shielding the wreck of crushed metal and wood from public view.
The Glória Funicular is located in central Lisbon, and offers a view over the city as it descends 265 metres down a steep slope.
It appears to have been thrown sideways as it rounded a bend 30m from the bottom station.
Lisbon residents, meanwhile, are trying to come to terms with what happened.
“It’s a terrible pain,” local resident Francisco Figueira says. He used to bring his son on the streetcar, and never felt in danger while doing so.
Figueira said he has lived for 40 years in the area, seeing the transformation of the city into a tourist hotspot.
“Now I don’t take [the streetcar], it’s too busy, there are a lot of foreigners, tourists. ... These things happen, you can never imagine, but of course it’s possible.” - Additional reporting by Reuters
