Thirteen people – among them foreign holidaymakers and one child – were killed on Tuesday as a massive oak tree crashed down onto festival goers at one of Madeira’s most popular religious summer festivals.
By Wednesday morning, the identities of the dead had been established: a father with his baby son in his arms, mothers, husbands, grandparents.
Two victims were French and Hungarian women.
Of the 49 injured requiring hospital treatment, seven remain in a serious condition, two of them children (one aged two with head trauma, the other 14 with internal injuries).
Within hours of the horror, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was on his way to the island to offer support and condolences in person.
But the bottom-line of the tragedy is that this was an accident that had been waiting to happen for “at least three years”.
Social media buzzed with stories of “incompetent authorities” that had been alerted to the risks posed by the tree, and other trees in the area.
Eye-witnesses talked of the 200-year-old oak having been secured to another by a steel cable, which they said posed its own dangers bearing in mind that if the tree fell, the cable could snap and cause serious damage to anyone in the way.
Wednesday morning saw two inquiries in place: one opened by the Public Ministry, the other by the regional government of Madeira.
If social media is to be believed, judicial police have already assured locals that arrests are in the pipeline.
Facebook group Ocorrências na Madeira has referred to other tree falls, both this year and in the recent past.
Appeals by the parish council for intervention go back to 2014, writes tabloid Correio da Manhã today, reproducing images of letters exchanged with higher authorities to no effective avail.
In March a massive branch fell elsewhere in the area, ‘narrowly missing’ a passer-by.
As local man António Mendonça – hailed a hero over social media for his plain-speaking – said, it was as if the authorities were waiting for a tragedy.
