“I missed Lisbon Funricular trip that killed my friend”

While Sonia Silva was preparing to leave work on Wednesday evening, she was asked by a colleague to help with a quick task.

This meant that she missed her regular cuffy hill with a friend to work at their home at home from the office in downtown Lisbon.

When she arrived at the bus a little later, the Tuiser crashed and her friend was dead.

“When I got there, it was a tragedy,” she said.

Sixteen people were killed on Wednesday night in Lisbon when his iconic 140-year-old Gloria Funricular derailed and collided with a building. The Portuguese Prime Minister described it as “one of the largest human tragedies in our recent history.”

Many of the killed were foreign citizens, including three British souls whose identities have not yet been announced. Police say five were killed by Portuguese – and four of them worked at the charity organization of Santa Casa to Misericia, located at the top of the hill.

On Friday, a church service was held at the charity headquarters in honor of the killed workers in the crash. The service was crowded, with people filling the paths and any other space available.

When they left, their colleagues cried and supported each other as they tried to make sense of the incident. Several told the BBC that they regularly use the funicular as part of their trip.

Sitting on a bench outside, Sonia said she had worked at the charity for eight years and uses the funicular every day.

“I can’t express (how I feel) – it’s very difficult. I’m grateful, but at the same time I’m very, very angry because my colleagues and many people died,” she said.

She said she would travel to and from work every day with her colleague Sandra Coelho.

“I loved her a lot because I always took the core with her – going home and in the morning. It’s very difficult because I won’t see her anymore,” she said in tears as her colleagues comforted her.

During her trip, she said that the two women would gossip and talk about their days.

“We would talk about colleagues, work, everything. We will meet in the morning and when we were done,” she said.

Others around the church also mourned the loss of friends and tried to process the incident.

“It’s terrible, we’re devastated. It’s hard to work at the moment,” said Lourdes Henricks.

“We always think of our colleagues and we wonder” did they suffer? “They can be here with us now.

“It could have been any of us – we all used this type of transport and felt very confident in it,” said Tanya, another worker worker.

Rui Franco, a city advisor whose close friend and former colleague Alda Matthias was killed in a Wednesday crash, said he was in shock.

“She was my age. She had a family, children and I can’t imagine if it was me that would happen to my family. She was a great person … with a very solid way of action in the world,” he said.

G -n Franco said he was “already angry” when he first learned about the fatal disaster, “when I realized that I knew the people who participate, the rage (became) prevailing.”

While investigating the cause of the crash is underway, there was a lot of speculation among the sorrows.

“It was always overcrowded,” one said as another accused poor maintenance.

The leader of the Union of Railway Workers claims that some workers have complained that problems with the cable tension that smears carriages make it difficult to stop.

“Even planes sometimes fall out of heaven. Accidents are listened to,” another woman said.

Several told the BBC that whatever the reason, they could not imagine using the funicular again.

“I told everyone that I would no longer use it,” Sonia said, before heading back to the office, surrounded by working friends.