Investigators search for cause of Lisbon funicular crash that killed 16

Investigators were sifting through the wreckage of a funicular in central Lisbon, 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, Luis 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, Alvaro 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 on 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 metres 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.

All 16 post-mortem examinations were concluded on Thursday, but the identification of three victims required access to dental records or family DNA that were held abroad, Francisco Corte-Real, the head of the national forensic medicine institute, told a joint news conference.

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 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, Mr 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 on Friday.

The company that operates Lisbon’s streetcars and buses, Carris, said it had opened its own internal investigation.

The streetcar, which has been in service since 1914, underwent a scheduled full maintenance programme last year and also underwent 30-minute visual inspections every day, Carris’ chief executive Pedro de Brito Bogas said during a news conference on Thursday.

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

The mayor said he would also ask for an investigation from an outside independent body, but did not elaborate.

Lisbon’s civil protection agency said earlier on 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 the agency, told reporters. She did not provide their identities, saying their families would be informed first.

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

The injured include men and women between the ages of 24 and 65, and a three-year-old child, Ms 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.

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 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’Avo 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 passers-by scattered into the middle of the nearby Avenida da Liberdade, or Freedom Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare.

The service, inaugurated in 1885, runs between Restauradores Square and the Bairro Alto neighbourhood 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.