There was no warning before the earthquake in Lisbon on Monday morning. Worse, the computer system of Portugal’s oceanic and atmospheric agency crashed shortly after the shaking began at 5.11am. No injuries have been reported, but residents, who were mostly fast asleep when it hit, have told of being terrified, jumping out of bed and “not being able to stand up”.
Patricia Brito, who lives in the centre of the city, says that, once she found her footing, she skidded into her parents thinking “this was the big one”. The shaking lasted less than a minute, but for three hours she couldn’t go to sleep as she and her friends WhatsApped each other from Setubal to Porto as they shared their stories. “One friend woke up and threw up a minute before it started, so she must have been hyper-sensitive to it coming.”
While the earthquake was moderate, with Lisbon 84km from its epicentre, the news dominated Portuguese and European headlines as it was felt in Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco.
The panic among Lisboetas was also understandable as residents of the city are used to living in the shadow of 1755, when a massive earthquake collapsed Lisbon’s churches during mass, launched tsunami waves over the city’s walls, and caused fires that lasted six days.
Scientists estimate the magnitude of that devastating event was 7.7 compared to the 5.4 that occurred on 26 August. What would an earthquake of that size mean for Lisbon today?
Given that two-thirds of the city’s buildings were built before anti-seismic regulations of the 1980s, the damage could be untold, which is why residents of that city are often exposed to drills whether that is tsunami alarms that are tested near the waterfront of the city, or school children being given instructions of what to do in the event of a catastrophic event.
Even last week, residents were all sent text messages reminding them to be alert to aftershocks, keep shoes close to them and check for cracks, damage and smells of gas.
We might not want to think about it, but Lisbon, like many holiday destinations, is under constant threat. It is just a matter of time before another big one strikes southern Europe. There’s no stopping the African tectonic plate on its path northward, threatening major upheaval.
Research published this May indicates that the climate crisis has magnified the hazard: rising sea levels and stronger storms can trigger earthquakes and related disasters like landslides and tsunamis. Even a little extra pressure from a full lake or reservoir can initiate seismic slip. This means increased risk for coastal areas around the Mediterranean, which are particularly vulnerable.
Not even the UK is safe, where earthquakes might seem exotic from the vantage point of the British Isles. In the 19th century, the popular historian Henry Thomas Buckle insisted that freedom from earthquakes was a precondition for Britain’s economic dynamism, since fear would discourage investment.
He even claimed that earthquake-prone lands were doomed to mental backwardness, for “there grow up among the people those feelings of awe, and of helplessness, on which all superstition is based”.
Nonetheless, the Scottish highlands have a long, well-documented history of small earthquakes. The tiny village of Comrie even became a tourist destination in the 19th century for those curious to feel the earth shake. In 1863, a tremor was palpable across 85,000 square metres of England, and in 1884 a quake centred in Essex caused enough damage to launch a national collection.
For a brief moment following these tremors, fear struck the heart of the British empire. Charles Dickens proclaimed that “we enjoy no immunity from the most sudden, the most irresistible, the most destructive of nature‘s powers. Another such shock as the Lisbon earthquake may happen this or next year.”
The Times warned of “means, utterly beyond our ken and our computation, far below our feet, by which cities may be subverted, populations suddenly cut off, and empires ruined…Who can say what strange trial of shaking, or upheaving, sinking, dividing, or drying up may await us?”
These were passing worries. Earthquakes in the UK were sooner entertainment than hazard. Nineteenth-century Londoners could procure a thrill by visiting the Cyclorama’s recreation of the Great Lisbon Earthquake, including moving scenery and offstage screams.
British earthquakes were long forgotten when the UK began building nuclear reactors in the 1960s, without anti-seismic reinforcement. Seismologists did their best to raise awareness. In 1983, The New Scientist placed an image on its cover of a cup of tea being thrown from its saucer, with the headline “Is Britain Prepared for Earthquakes?” The Times responded with a dismissive editorial, insisting that the British “have other things on their mind”.
In the 2010s, reports of tremors in Lancashire were linked to hydraulic fracking, which can trigger earthquakes much as rising water levels do. The government placed a moratorium on fracking in 2019, but fear of a fuel shortage from the war in Ukraine has driven demands to lift it. Experts are still calculating the risks.
The earthquakes that threaten southern Europe are roughly 100,000 times more powerful than the ones produced by fracking in the UK. Governments in the region rely on short-term forecasting to avert disaster.
Following a deadly earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy in 2009, six seismologists were convicted of manslaughter because they had failed to warn the city of imminent danger.
