Chapter 6 - REDUCED TO RUBBLE

The so-called Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 devastated not only Lisbon, but almost all the towns and villages along the entire southern coast of Portugal. In fact, the Algarve was much closer to the earthquake’s epicentre and suffered proportionally far more destruction than Lisbon.

In Porches, three main shocks and a series of aftershocks on the morning of 1 November, All Saints’ Day, totally destroyed 238 houses and severely damaged the parish church and the chapel of São Sebastião. The village and all outlying buildings and historical vestiges were almost totally demolished.

In Lagoa, the parish church, a fort, a major convent and many well-built houses were destroyed. Of the houses and religious buildings left standing, the majority were severely damaged.

In Silves, the castle walls, the cathedral, the town hall and other public buildings and most of the houses were destroyed. The remaining houses were damaged.

The tsunami that followed the earthquake overwhelmed Armação de Pêra. It killed 67 people, destroyed the fortress, the São António Church and half the houses. Most of the rest of the buildings in the town were badly damaged. The tsunami is believed to have measured up to 20 metres in height and penetrated 2.5 kilometres inland.

The most extensive flooding was in the area between Alvor and the Arade estuary at Portimão. A chapel on the beach by Alvor harbour was destroyed completely leaving no trace of its foundations. The floodwaters almost reached houses at an elevation of 30 metres 660 metres inland.

From the epicentre of the earthquake southwest of Lagos, The tsunami took 16 minutes to reach Cape St Vincent and 30 minutes to get to the Spanish border. With decreasing force, the effects of the tsunami were felt as far away as the Caribbean and the British Isles.

Measuring at least 8.5Mw, this was the worst earthquake known to hit Europe before or since. Overall, it reportedly killed up to 70,000 people. A more recent estimate, based on historical data, puts the death toll in Portugal at between 15,000 and 20,000, of whom more than 1,000 and perhaps twice that number lived in the Algarve. The proportion of the population who died in the Algarve was low relative to the capital city because most inhabitants here lived in single-storey houses in low-density communities and so there was a greater chance of speedy evacuation.

Such was the widespread carnage, it cost Portugal between 32% and 48% of its Gross Domestic Product - probably a lot more in the Algarve - making it the greatest natural catastrophe in Western Europe in financial terms. The Algarve economy did not emerge from the ruins of 1755 until the advent of tourism in the second half of the 20th century.

In the weeks and months after the calamity, inhabitants of Porches and elsewhere in the region had to live in makeshift arrangements while reconstruction got underway. Starvation was averted because subsidence farming could continue even though much labour had to be diverted into rebuilding homes.

Fishing, however, was so severely disrupted that Portugal’s dynamic prime minister, The Marquis of Pombal, nationalised the important sardine industry. He did this under a “Restoration of the Kingdom of the Algarve” programme.

By then, Pombal had introduced strict measures to deter looters, to bury the dead without delay and to lower the risks of pestilence. His government went on to impose price controls on basic foodstuffs such as cereals and olive oil. Among the many other emergency measures, Pombal sent extra troops to the Algarve to guard against those from outside the region who might seek to take advantage of the highly vulnerable situation on the south coast. He had in mind the old enemy, pirates and privateers from North Africa.

Stringent building regulations were introduced throughout Portugal after the earthquake and these have been frequently updated since then. Today, the Algarve has a comprehensive range of emergency services, mindful that large earthquakes have occurred in the centuries before and since 1755. In recent years, special emergency plans have been developed for various seismic catastrophe scenarios.

Professor David Chester of Liverpool University is among those who have researched and written not only about the impact of the earthquake on the Algarve and how the region recovered, but about the lessons to be learned.

He has noted: “Today the Algarve is one of Europe’s principal tourist destinations and a region vital to the Portuguese economy. The 1755 earthquake was not a one off event and the Algarve, which now houses a resident population of over 400,000 – a figure that more than doubles with tourists in the summer months - is highly exposed to earthquakes and tsunamis. An earthquake of similar size is viewed as a worse-case future scenario with a minimum estimated recurrence of 614 ± 105 years.”

Fault line and 1755 epicentre southwest of the Algarve