Preliminary investigations show that at least 16 people were killed and several others injured prior to Wednesday’s fatal sexual conflict in Lisbon’s Portuguese capital.
An investigation conducted by the office to prevent and investigate civil aviation and railway (GPIAAF) accidents revealed that the steel cables connecting the two historic Glóriafunicular carriages “give up” the road shortly after they began their respective journeys along the Calsadadaglilia.
The inspection, scheduled for the morning of the incident, was released on Saturday with the release saying “there are no abnormalities in the vehicle’s cable or braking system.” It added that it is “impossible” to see the condition of sections where the cable is broken.
This led to a carriage at the top of the street increasing the speed of the slope and then derailing, and reports of the GPIAAF were discovered. “The initial collision occurred at a speed of about 60 km/h (about 37 mph), and all of these events occurred in a time frame of less than 50 seconds,” the report states based on early estimates.
According to GPIAAF, further investigation is needed, so it is still not possible to draw solid conclusions as to the exact cause of the incident.
The fub bug uses a counterweight pulley system to allow the other cars to rise as the performance of one car drops. The two Glória carriages “suddenly lost the balanced force provided by the cables that the cables connect to,” and had not traveled more than about six meters when the probe discovered.
The report said the cable connecting the two carriages “cleared quickly” as it could “make way with an attachment point” in the car above. The photo in the report shows a large frayed cable on the ground.
When the cable broke, the report states that the brake man at the top of the cabin “will try to stop moving by applying pneumatic brakes and handbrakes immediately,” but these actions “had no effect on stopping or reducing the speed of the cabin and continued to promote the slope.”
In the current configuration, the carriage’s air brakes and manual brakes “are not sufficiently capable of stopping a cabin that is moving without balancing the empty chunks of air against each other due to the connection cable,” the report added.
The remaining cables and the pulleys on which they run are “obviously no significant anomalies,” the report says.
Furthermore, the cable itself, which was installed 337 days before the incident, was said to have a “useful life of 600 days.”
Among those killed in the incident, five Portuguese citizens, three British people, two Canadians, two Koreans, and individuals from Switzerland, Ukraine, the US and France have been confirmed to have been killed, Portuguese judicial police said on Friday.
GPIAAF said the full preliminary report on the incident is expected to be published within 45 days, with the final report continuing within a year.
