LISBON, Portugal — Authorities in Portugal announced on Friday that out of the 16 fatalities from the streetcar derailment, 11 were foreign nationals. The anticipated initial investigative report explaining the reasons behind the crash involving Lisbon’s popular tourist tram was postponed by one day.
Among those who perished were five citizens of Portugal, three from the UK, two from Canada, two from South Korea, one American, one French, one Swiss, and one Ukrainian, according to a police statement.
Contrary to earlier reports about a German victim, police clarified he was alive and receiving treatment in a Lisbon hospital, though they did not elaborate on the initial misinformation.
The list of nationalities was published following forensic identification.
The well-known yellow-and-white Elevador da Gloria, designated a national monument, was crowded with both locals and visitors on Wednesday evening when it derailed. The incident resulted in 16 dead and 21 injured.
Multiple agencies are investigating what Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has described as “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.”
The Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations stated that it had completed its examination of the incident’s aftermath and planned to release a preliminary technical assessment on Friday. However, it informed the national news agency Lusa that the release would be postponed to Saturday due to procedural delays with other organizations. Details about the findings in the initial report remain undisclosed.
Chief police investigator Nelson Oliveira said that a preliminary police report, which has a broader scope, is expected within 45 days.
The streetcar’s wreckage was removed from the scene overnight and placed in police custody.
A tragedy beyond Portugal’s borders
A woman who was a French-Canadian dual citizen is among the dead, the French Foreign Ministry said Friday.
SITRA, the transport workers’ union, reported that André Marques, the streetcar’s brakeman, was among the deceased. Additionally, the national Portuguese charity Santa Casa da Misericórdia, located at the hilltop terminus of the streetcar route, confirmed four of its employees were killed in the accident.
Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people were injured, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos, said.
“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, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the attendees, some dressed in black, in the candlelit sanctuary.
Daily inspections
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 or 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.”
Hernán Muñoz in Lisbon, and Angela Charlton in Paris, contributed to this report.
The video in the player above is from an earlier report.
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