Lisbon Civil Protection plans earthquake response together with parish councils

An organized emergency response to an earthquake can take up to 72 hours, so Lisbon’s Municipal Civil Protection Service (SMPC) is working with parish councils to plan assistance.

According to Margarida Castro Martins, director of SMPC in Lisbon, experience from other earthquakes shows that it is estimated that an organized emergency response “can take up to 72 hours”, that is, three days, and that during this period 95% of assistance is provided by the population , family, neighbors and friends.

The person in charge of the initiative promoted by the association Lisboa E-Nova – the Lisbon Energy and Environment Agency, about “Local Emergency Planning”, explained that the city council of the capital thus prepares, together with the parish councils, measures to prevent and respond to the occurrence of an earthquake and “tsunami”.

This takes into account that no one knows the territory and population better than parish councils, their employees and residents.

The SMPC leader emphasized that the seismic risk in the Lisbon Metropolitan Region (AML) is considered “high to very high” and that the basis of the Metropolitan Municipality’s response is the Special Action Plan for Civil Protection against Seismic Risk in the AML and neighboring municipalities.

In the municipality of Lisbon, with 24 parishes and 545,796 inhabitants, the most populous parish is Lumiar with 46,334 inhabitants, and the least populous is Misericordia with 9,658 inhabitants, which naturally have “different realities”, and only local civil protection units (ULPC) in the parishes of Alcantara (2016), Misericordia (2020) and Penha de France (2021).

The municipality is preparing local emergency plans for the parishes of Avenidas Novas, Beato, Belem, Campo de Ourique, and updating the plans of Arroios and Olivais.

In addition to seismic risk plans, the municipality is also promoting a coastal evacuation plan in the event of a “tsunami” with a post-earthquake warning and warning system.

The municipality has already installed two sirens: in Imperio Square in the parish of Belem and in Ribeira das Naus in the parish of Santa Maria Mayor, and two more sirens are planned for 2024 in Doca de Santos (Alcantara) and Estação de Santos ( Estrela), which calls for at least six more sirens to be installed in coastal parishes by 2026.

National Director of Prevention and Risk Management of the National Emergency Management and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC), Carlos Mendes, presented the work done on seismic risk assessment in the fight against money laundering, which is also used in the plan for the Algarve region.

The official also emphasized that in these types of events, “the first reaction is mainly an immediate reaction”, which “often is not even carried out by organized relief structures” and that in the first hours, “civic mutual aid mechanisms” are mainly in effect. . .

The anti-money laundering action plan and neighboring municipalities have mobilized more than one hundred actors “for a coordinated response” to the earthquake situation, and in the case of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter scale, means of support from areas outside the territory. and the identification of airstrips for international assistance, namely the Monte Real and Beja or Sintra and Montijo airbases.

International support mechanisms could come from France, Spain and Morocco, but Carlos Mendes noted that in the event of an earthquake like the 1755 earthquake, Spain and Morocco could also be affected, and therefore assistance would have to be provided through other European countries.

The Lisboa E-Nova session, according to Eduardo Silva, from the organization, despite some technical problems, was aimed at raising awareness of seismic risk in the city of Lisbon and in the fight against money laundering, with the aim of guaranteeing a culture of prevention necessary to anticipate not only “the ability to react, but also the way to respond” in a situation of a possible disaster.