“I thought it was an earthquake,” a passenger told the Ansa news agency. “I was sitting down and I fell on the floor, along with the other passengers. It was terrible.”
The crowded line 9 tram had been running along Viale Vittorio Veneto in Milan at about 16:00 local time on Friday when it left the track and crashed into a building. At least two people died. Up to 40 others were reported injured.
One of the dead, a 60-year-old man, is thought to have been a pedestrian hit by the tram. The other victim and most of the injured were passengers. Ambulances went to the scene in numbers, and there were reports of people trapped in the wreckage. Civil protection teams put up a tent for the injured.
Passengers described a noise underneath the tram, after which it veered off its track, gathered speed and went into the side of a building. It apparently hit a traffic light first, then smashed a restaurant window. La Repubblica reported that a delivery rider waiting at the light and a young man on the pavement narrowly escaped injury. A woman who boarded at the first stop, Piazza della Repubblica, told Corriere della Sera she was standing beside the driver when “they all crashed into me.” Anna, 27, who was in a nearby office, told AFP: “I just heard an enormous bang. I saw a bit of the tram had gone into a shop.”
Cause unclear
Nobody has said what caused the derailment. Media reports suggested the tram took a sharp corner too fast as it turned out of Viale Vittorio Veneto.
Mayor Giuseppe Sala called the crash a “tragedy” and said there would be investigations. He described the driver as “very experienced” and said he had been on duty for only an hour and was not working overtime. Sala also pointed to something odd. “There is a stop here that was skipped, and so that adds another element to what happened,” he told Reuters. He added that officials were considering whether the driver had suddenly fallen ill.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered her “deepest condolences” over the deaths. The transport company ATM said it was “deeply shaken” and that its thoughts were with the victims and their families.
Corriere della Sera reported that the three-car tram was one of a new bidirectional type, with a driver’s cab at each end, put into service in the city only a few weeks before. The crash came while Milan was full of visitors for Fashion Week, days after the Winter Olympics ended and ahead of the Paralympics.
Sources
- Tram derails in Milan, leaving two dead and dozens injured
- Tram derails in Milan, leaving two dead and dozens injured
