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

Key Points

• Investigators are probing the cause of a streetcar crash in Lisbon that resulted in the deaths of 16 people and injuries to 21 others, including five seriously.
• The victims include a mix of nationalities, with identified victims being from Portugal, South Korea, and Switzerland, and suspected additional victims from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Ukraine.
• The streetcar service, popular among tourists, has been temporarily halted while inspections are conducted following the accident.
• The government is conducting an investigation, with preliminary findings expected within 45 days, while the streetcar operator reported that it was inspected daily prior to the crash.

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — 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.

Portugal’s attorney-general’s office said eight victims have been identified so far: 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. Three remain to be identified.

Among the injured are Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos Almeida, said.

The nationalities appeared to confirm suspicions that the Elevador da Gloria was packed with tourists as well as locals when it came off its rails during the evening rush hour Wednesday. 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.

“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.

Montenegro, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the hundreds of people who attended a somber Mass at Lisbon’s imposing Church of Saint Dominic on Thursday evening.

Many of the stricken attendees were dressed in black, some embraced, and others carried flowers into the majestic candlelit sanctuary.

In his sermon, the city's archbishop, Patriarch Rui I of Lisbon, talked of how humans have faith in machines but in this instance, the streetcar betrayed that trust.

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. On Thursday, officials took photographs and pulled up cable from beneath the rails that climb one of the Portuguese capital’s steep hills.

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,” the mayor 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, Montenegro told reporters. The government's Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said it had 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.

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 during a news conference Thursday.

The streetcar was last inspected nine hours before the derailment, he said, but he didn't detail the visual inspection nor specify when questioned whether all the cables were tested.

The mayor said he would request an investigation from an outside independent body, but didn't elaborate.

Tourists and locals ride the 19th century streetcar

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 people who died were adults, Margarida Castro Martins, head of Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency, told reporters. She didn't provide their identities, saying their families would be informed first.

All 16 autopsies were concluded Thursday, but the identification of the final three victims requires access to dental records or family DNA that are held abroad, Francisco Corte-Real, the head of the National Forensic Medicine Institute, told a joint news conference.

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, and a 3-year-old child, Castro Martins 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.

‘It could have been us’

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 told The Associated Press 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.”

Witness Teresa d’Avó told Portuguese television channel SIC that it looked like the streetcar had no brakes.

“It hit the building with brutal force and fell apart like a cardboard box,” she said, describing how passersby scattered 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.”

Service halted as inspections ordered

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.

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.

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Hernán Muñoz in Lisbon contributed to this report.