LISBON, Portugal — Details started to emerge about the people who were killed when a streetcar in Portugal’s capital derailed, as the first investigative report examining what caused the popular Lisbon tourist attraction to crash was expected to be released Friday.
The distinctive yellow-and-white Elevador da Gloria, which is classified as a national monument, was packed with locals and international tourists Wednesday evening when it came off its rails. Sixteen people were killed and 21 more were injured.
Multiple agencies are investigating what Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has described as “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.”
The government’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said it has 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.
Portugal’s attorney-general’s office said Thursday that eight of the dead have been identified: 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. Investigators are still working to identify three of the victims.
The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said the streetcar’s brakeman, André Marques, was among the dead.
Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people were injured, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos Almeida, said. Five remained in serious condition.
“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, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the stricken attendees, some dressed in black, in the candlelit sanctuary.
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…
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