LISBON, Portugal — A picturesque electric streetcar that is one of Lisbon’s big tourist attractions derailed and crashed Wednesday, killing 15 people and injuring 18 others, emergency services said.
Five of the injured were in serious condition and a child was among the injured, Portugal’s National Institute for Medical Emergencies said in a statement, adding that an unknown number of foreigners were among the injured.
Authorities called it an accident, the worst in the city’s recent history, and it cast a pall over Lisbon’s charm for the millions of foreign tourists who arrive every year. Officials did not immediately provide a cause of the crash.
The yellow-and-white streetcar, which is known as Elevador da Gloria and goes up and down a steep downtown hill, was lying on its side on the narrow road that it travels on, its sides and top crumpled. It appeared to have crashed into a building where the road bends, leaving parts of the mostly metal vehicle crushed.
“It hit the building with brutal force and fell apart like a cardboard box…” Teresa d’Avó told Portuguese TV channel SIC.
Several dozen emergency workers were at the scene but most stood down after about two hours.
Eyewitnesses told local media that the streetcar careened down the hill, apparently out of control. One witness said the streetcar toppled onto a man on a sidewalk.
Videos shared widely across social media of the moments after the accident showed what appeared to be heavy smoke in the air as people got out of a streetcar just in front of the one that crashed, some racing up the hill to the wreckage as people around yelled.
Carris, the company that operates the streetcar, said scheduled maintenance had been carried out. It offered its deepest condolences to the victims and their families in a social media post, and promised that all due diligence would be taken in finding the causes of the accident.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa offered his condolences to affected families, and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said the city was in mourning. “It’s a tragedy of the like we’ve never seen,” Moedas said.
Portugal’s government announced that a day of national mourning would be observed on Thursday. “A tragic accident … caused the irreparable loss of human life, which left in mourning their families and dismayed the whole country,” it said in a statement.
