Portuguese investigators search for cause of Lisbon streetcar crash that killed 16

Lisbon: Investigators sifted through the wreckage of a streetcar in downtown Lisbon on Thursday, trying to determine why the popular tourist attraction derailed during the busy summer season, killing 16 people and injuring 21, five of them seriously.

The Elevador da Gloria came off its rails during the evening rush hour Wednesday when it was packed with locals and international tourists. Officials cordoned off the crash site, and were taking photographs and pulling up a metal cable from beneath the rails that climb one of the Portuguese capital’s steep hills.

“This tragedy … goes beyond our borders,” Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said at his official residence, calling it “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.” Portugal observed a national day of mourning Thursday.

The electric streetcar, also known as a funicular, provides a short and picturesque trip a few hundred meters up and down a city street. It is harnessed by steel cables, with the descending car helping with its weight to pull up the other one, 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 road bends.

“The city needs answers,” Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said in a televised statement, adding that talk of possible causes is “mere speculation.”

Police, public prosecutors and government transport experts are investigating the crash, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro told reporters. The government’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said it would issue a preliminary report Friday.

The company that operates Lisbon’s streetcars, Carris, said it has opened its own investigation and that scheduled maintenance had been carried out.

The mayor said he would also ask for an investigation from an outside independent body, but didn’t elaborate.

Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency said earlier Thursday that the death toll had risen to 17. It later corrected that to 16, citing a duplication of available information.

All the dead were adults, Margarida Castro Martins, head of Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency, told reporters. She didn’t provide their names or nationalities, saying that their families would be informed first.

The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said that the streetcar’s brakeman, André Marques, was among the dead.

The injured include men and women between the ages of 24 and 65 as well as a 3-year-old child, she said. Among them are Portuguese people as well as two Germans, two Spaniards and one person each from France, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Morocco, South Korea and Cape Verde, she said.

The range of nationalities reflects how big a draw the renowned 19th-century streetcar is for tourists and locals alike.

Felicity Ferriter, a 70-year-old British tourist, had just arrived with her husband at a hotel near the crash site and was unpacking her suitcase when she heard “a horrendous crash.”

“We heard it, we heard the bang,” she said outside her hotel.

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.”

She said that the emergency response was “amazing.” Police and ambulances quickly “flooded in,” she said.

“It hit the building with brutal force and fell apart like a cardboard box,” witness Teresa d’Avó told Portuguese television channel SIC. She said it looked like the streetcar had no brakes. She described watching passersby run into the middle of the nearby Avenida da Liberdade, or Freedom Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare.

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.”

The service, inaugurated in 1885, runs between Restauradores Square and the Bairro Alto neighborhood renowned for its nightlife. The Elevador da Gloria is classified as a national monument.

Lisbon’s City Council halted operations of three other famous funicular streetcars in the city while immediate inspections were carried out.

Lisbon hosted around 8.5 million tourists last year, and long lines of people typically form for the brief rides on the popular streetcar.

European Union flags at the European Parliament and European Commission in Brussels flew at half-staff. Multiple EU leaders expressed their condolences on social media.