People look at the Elevador da Gloria streetcar which derailed and crashed in Lisbon, on Thursday.Armando Franca/The Associated Press
Two Canadians are believed to have been killed after a popular electric-streetcar attraction crashed in Lisbon on Wednesday, killing 16 people, a Portuguese official says.
Luis Neves, Portugal’s judicial police chief, said there was a “high degree of certainty” that there are two Canadians, one Ukrainian and one German among the dead, although the identities could not yet be officially confirmed.
A U.S. citizen was also killed in the crash, the State Department said in a statement.
Global Affairs Canada said Wednesday afternoon that it is aware of two missing Canadian citizens.
Consular officials are in contact with local authorities to gather more information, said spokesperson Thida Ith in an e-mailed statement Thursday.
She said no further information can be disclosed because of privacy considerations, including the names of the two missing Canadians.
(L to R, first row) Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Lisbon's Mayor Carlos Moedas, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, and Foreign Affairs Minister Paulo Rangel attend a memorial mass for the victims of the Gloria funicular accident at Sao Domingos Church in Lisbon on Thursday.PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP/Getty Images
One Canadian national was among the 21 injured, the head of Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency, Margarida Castro Martins, told reporters.
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.
Investigators also sifted through the wreckage in downtown Lisbon, trying to determine why the popular tourist attraction derailed during the busy summer season.
Prime Minister Mark Carney posted on X about the incident Thursday morning, before the statement was released by Global Affairs.
“My thoughts are with the people of Lisbon following last night’s tragic accident,” he said. “Canadians are wishing comfort and support to those grieving loved ones, and a swift recovery to everyone who was injured.”
Portugal’s attorney-general’s office said eight victims have been identified so far: five Portuguese, two South Koreans and a Swiss person.
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 Elevador da Gloria 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 short and picturesque trip a few hundred metres up and down a city street.
Portuguese officials focused Thursday on establishing the causes of the crash of a Lisbon streetcar popular with tourists that killed at least 16 people and injured 21, five of them seriously.
The Associated Press
“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 autopsies were concluded Thursday, but the identification of 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.
Officials declined to comment on whether a faulty brake or a snapped cable may have prompted the descending funicular 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 inspect the wreckage of the streetcar.PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP/Getty Images
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 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 funicular, 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.
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, Ms. Castro Martins told reporters. She didn’t provide their identities, saying their families would be informed first.
The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said that the funicular’s brakeman, André 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.
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.”
With reports from Reuters and the Associated Press