Witnesses describe the Fatal Lisbon Funricular Catastrophe

Just after 6:00 pm on Wednesday, when the carriage of the famous Gloria Funnya’s Lisbon Tuke appeared around the turn of a steep cobblestone street, collided with a building and a crusher, eyewitnesses said.

“He hit a building with a brutal force and collapsed like a cardboard box,” Teresa d’Avo told the Portuguese television channel SIC, adding that it seemed “no brakes”.

Police are still investigating the cause of the crash, which killed at least 17 people and injured 20 more, some critically, near Lisbon Avenda to Libarde in the Portuguese capital.

The video checked by the BBC shows the crashed yellow-white train on a hill, crushed against the building, with another train being stopped at the bottom. People run up to the slope to the site of the crash.

Helen Chow, who is from Canada and was visiting Lisbon, was at the heart of Gloria Hill, from where the trams climb to the Bayro Alto neighborhood when she said she heard a strong scream.

A tram “made a firm stop, I saw black debris, I heard the passengers of this tram scream … The driver rushed to open the gates to the entrance to the tram,” she told the BBC.

“People jumped out the window of this tram … Just when that happened, I saw the Tram incident colliding into the building next to the subway restaurant.”

“It was awful … The sound was unlike anything I’ve ever heard,” she added. “I’m shaken.”

D’Avo said to the Portuguese newspaper Observador that the vehicle is “out of control, without brakes”.

“We all started running because we were thinking (the carriage) would hit the one below,” she said. “But she fell around the bend and crashed into a building.”

Eric Packer of the US, but visiting Lisbon on vacation, told the BBC that he had discussed with his friends who took the cable car and took pictures at 18:00 and 18:01, but instead decided to return to his hotel.

They walked about 60 meters and heard a loud noise from a crash, “like a rock falling, as a dump truck had released a load of rocks” at 18:02.

They turned to see the dust coming out of the alley about 45 meters (148 feet) behind them and went back to see what happened. At first, he thought the train at the bottom fell until he turned and saw the other train that was above him, and realized “the magnitude of what happened.”

His photo shows a yellow-white train, a metal knit, on the corner of the narrow alley under the sign of a metro restaurant, with the other train at the bottom of the hill beneath it.

“People () were going up and running up to try to help,” he said. “A terrible tragedy and our thoughts and prayers come to families and survivors.”