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Details started to emerge about the people who were killed when a streetcar in Portugal’s capital derailed, as the first investigative report examining what caused the popular Lisbon tourist attraction to crash was expected to be released Friday.
The distinctive yellow-and-white Elevador da Gloria, which is classified as a national monument, was packed with locals and international tourists Wednesday evening when it came off its rails. Sixteen people were killed and 21 more were injured.
Multiple agencies are investigating what Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has described as “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.”
The government’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said it has concluded its analysis of the wreckage and would issue a preliminary report Friday. Chief police investigator Nelson Oliveira said a preliminary police report is expected within 45 days.
A tragedy beyond Portugal’s borders
Portugal’s attorney-general’s office said Thursday that eight of the dead have been identified: five Portuguese, two South Koreans and a Swiss person.
There is “a high possibility,” based on recovered documents and other evidence, that the victims also include two Canadians, one American, one German and one Ukrainian, according to the head of the national investigative police, Luís Neves. Investigators are still working to identify three of the victims.
The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said the streetcar’s brakeman, André Marques, was among the dead.
Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people were injured, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos Almeida, said. Five remained in serious condition.
“This tragedy … goes beyond our borders,” Montenegro said in a televised address from his official residence. Lisbon hosted around 8.5 million tourists last year, and long lines of people typically form for the streetcar’s short and picturesque trip a few hundred meters up and down a city street. Thursday was a national day of mourning.
Hundreds of people attended a somber Mass Thursday evening at Lisbon’s majestic Church of Saint Dominic. Montenegro, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the stricken attendees, some dressed in black, in the candlelit sanctuary.
Operator says the streetcar was inspected daily
The electric streetcar, also known as a funicular, is harnessed by steel cables and can carry more than 40 people. Officials declined to comment on whether a faulty brake or a snapped cable may have prompted the descending streetcar to careen into a building where the steep downtown road bends.
“The city needs answers,” the mayor said, adding that talk of possible causes is “mere speculation.”
Aside from investigations by police, public prosecutors and government transport experts, the company that operates Lisbon’s streetcars and buses, Carris, said it has opened its own investigation.
The streetcar, which has been in service since 1914, underwent a scheduled full maintenance program last year and the company conducted a 30-minute visual inspection of it every day, Carris’ CEO Pedro de Brito Bogas said Thursday.
The streetcar was last inspected nine hours before the derailment, he said during a news conference, but he didn’t detail the visual inspection nor specify when questioned whether all the cables were tested.
Lisbon’s City Council halted operations of three other funicular streetcars while immediate inspections were carried out.
Tourists are shaken
Felicity Ferriter, a 70-year-old British tourist, said she was unpacking her suitcase at a nearby hotel when she heard “a horrendous crash.”
The couple had seen the streetcar when they arrived and intended to ride on it the next day.
“It was to be one of the highlights of our holiday,” she said, adding: “It could have been us.”
Francesca di Bello, a 23-year-old Italian tourist on a family vacation, had been on the Elevador da Gloria just hours before the derailment.
They walked by the crash site on Thursday, expressing shock at the wreckage. Asked if she would ride a funicular again in Portugal or elsewhere, Di Bello was emphatic: “Definitely not.”
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Hernán Muñoz in Lisbon contributed to this report.
