The earthquake that brought enlightenment

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Not long after an 8.5-magnitude earthquake struck Lisbon in 1755, a prominent man rode a horse and ran through the ruins to reach the King of Portugal. The king, Dom Jose I, narrowly escaped death by staying in his own palace outside the city. As someone who valued hunting and hunting more than ruling, the king was not sure how to take back his ruined kingdom. In a moment sealed forever in Portuguese history books, the man rode on horseback, Minister of State Sebastiao José de Carvalho e Melo. Sensing uncertainty in the air, he began issuing orders to his aides and quickly led efforts to restore the country.

With the king’s blessing, de Carvallo – known in history as the Marquis de Pombal – continued to rule Portugal until the death of Dom Jose. (After the earthquake, Dom Jose suffered from acute claustrophobia indoors and lived the rest of his days in a plush tent, serving as a figurehead while Pombal made strategic decisions.) Over his 22 years in power, Pombal became a fiercely controversial figure who used the Lisbon destruction To force the religious state to enter the modern era. The post-earthquake Lisbon demonstrated modern thinking about seismology, architecture and disaster planning. Now, these innovations are helping the Portuguese people to plan another attack from the sea.

November 1, 1755, the day of the earthquake, had dawned like any other Halloween day in Lisbon. Parishioners used to attend mass and servants were preparing at home for the feasts. Almost 300 kilometers away and at the depth of the ocean floor, the tectonic plates of Africa, Eurasia and America meet at a geological hotspot. The Atlantic is calm, from a seismic perspective, but that morning the plates slipped and released as much energy as 32,000 Hiroshima bombs. The tremors and waves spread across the North Atlantic, raising rivers in Scotland and claiming lives as far away as Brazil. The worst of the fires of Hell were preserved in Lisbon.

At around 9:30 a.m., tremors shook beneath the city, and Lisbon’s numerous church bells rang in unison. Some people remembered a “terrifying underground noise” before the ground began to shake in a six-minute uprising that led to the collapse of cathedrals and buried neighborhoods. Within an hour, a six-meter-long tsunami struck the waterfront and killed hundreds who had gathered there in search of safety. Meanwhile, hundreds of small fires, spread through inverted cooking stoves and votive candles, were escalating in what would become a five-day firestorm. This final blow was the most devastating and destructive of what remained of Portugal’s crown jewel.

In this engraving, an artist explained what Lisbon, Portugal looked like, just before the 1755 earthquake. Photo engraving by Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo

The Great Lisbon Earthquake is an example of Portugal’s contrasting relationship with the sea. For centuries before the disaster, Portugal had grown on the virtue of the vast maritime empire that stretched from Brazil to India – yet maritime navigation was generally blessed in Portuguese society and very little of the colonial spoils were invested in the country or its country. Citizenship. In one day, the ocean only settled Lisbon, which is the connecting link between the empire as much of the country’s wealth was stored in spacious warehouses on the waterfront. One of the destroyed warehouses, Casa da India, contained an estimated 1.5 percent of Portugal’s GDP from Brazilian diamonds. The devoted Catholic residents of Lisbon saw the destroyed city as divine punishment. Protestant nations in Europe also viewed destruction as a punishment, albeit for backward Catholic behavior. Nevertheless, Pombal saw a path to power and an opportunity to rewrite the future of a crumbling colonial state.

With a team of military engineers, he imposed a grid-like design on the twisting medieval streets of the Baixa district of the city center. The resulting regular road was not only neat, but also accelerated future emergency evacuation, improved transportation, garbage collection and sanitation. Nearly two-thirds of the planted housing stock was wiped out in Lisbon during the earthquake, but the new building code promulgated by Pombal introduced firewalls and a wooden frame called the Pombalina Cage which was affected by seismic forces. The wooden frame structure, designed by its team of military engineers, can withstand small to medium earthquakes. In severe vibration, the building facade may collapse, but the majority of the structure will remain intact. Pombal’s other forward-looking efforts included building drains under city streets to cope with floods. Direct workers to lead wooden supports in the changing sandy soil of the city to secure building foundations and build a protective front shore along the Tagus River, which flows through the city and out into its brackish port. New Lisbon has crystallized on top of the old – literally. During the recent construction of a subway in the city, an archaeological team discovered that earthquake ruins extended 10 to 15 meters deep. Demolished buildings raised the foundations of the city above the waterline and helped insulate Lisbon from future tsunamis. Today, Pombal’s innovations are recognized as being among the first in disaster planning efforts in urban design.

Before the earthquake, Pombal had spent years in England and Austria devouring ideas of the Enlightenment, while the church and aristocracy ruled Portugal with force from the Middle Ages. When Pombal took over, he followed in the footsteps of other enlightened dictators of the time – rulers like Catherine the Great who imposed reform from the top. He also had a wild streak that flashed whenever a church or aristocracy tried to regain control. In one particularly harsh revenge for a failed plot against the king’s life, he has arrested Portugal’s most powerful families for interrogation and, in a few cases, torture. He then publicly executed several accused members of the Tavora family, banned the title Tavora, and renamed a river called Tavora River of Death. It is possible that this excessive power played a role in his unpopularity in both high and low society. When Dom Jose I died, Pombal was immediately expelled by the king’s pious daughter. This allowed Pombal two decades to make the innovative reforms still on display and studied today.

More than a century after the earthquake, a storm artist painted this engraving on wood. Photo for the engraving by World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Maria Anna Baptista is a Lisbon geophysicist who draws on Pombal’s work. For her PhD, she designed the 1755 Tsunami using letters, historical poems, speeches, and scholarly notes written around the time of the Great Lisbon Earthquake. The bulk of its data came from a survey that Pombal mailed to every Portuguese parish shortly after the earthquake. At the time, the questionnaire was striking because it did not mention God. Pombal desired precisely realistic observations, such as when the earthquake began; How long did the shaking last and whether there were any anomalies in the sea or along rivers and springs. The 646 responses that Pombal collected allowed Baptista, hundreds of years later, to illustrate how the sea inundated Lisbon.

The 1755 earthquake is known among scientists as the first modern disaster in Europe, so it is attracting attention although most seismologists agree that it is unlikely that another earthquake across the ocean and a tsunami like this one strikes Lisbon. Baptista also modeled other historic tsunamis in Lisbon, including a less powerful earthquake that struck directly below the city in 1531. She determined that this type of earthquake is more likely to repeat and will be more devastating today. Either way, Lisbon is at risk.

In the Baixa neighborhood that Pombal rebuilt, the lessons of the Great Lisbon earthquake are starting to fade among its present-day residents. Very few Portuguese live in this prestigious neighborhood today; Foreign workers and tourists dominate. A 2020 study polled residents and found that most of them would make the same mistake as their 1,755 counterparts, as they run toward the riverbank and face an oncoming tsunami. Although the building’s original facades remain, the owners are allowed to manipulate the interior of the Pombalina’s cage, endangering its structural integrity. As the city grew, the riverfront expanded with the help of filled sediments. During an earthquake, this unstable ground will turn into a liquid swamp. According to Baptista and other researchers, it is Portugal’s tourism industry that is responsible for hampering disaster warning and preparedness as it fears losing visitors and income. We do not have evacuation routes in Lisbon. “We don’t have tsunami signs,” she says. “The tourism industry is just starting to understand the importance of being prepared.”

Not all of the disaster-related changes made by the Marquis de Pombal in Lisbon continued, but new technology may one day help the city in the event of another earthquake. Photo by Sean Pavone / iStock

Pombal’s tradition of using the flag to protect Lisbon remains alive, albeit obscure. José Barros, Director of Portugal’s telecom regulator, is taking the opportunity to build a new disaster warning system right on the sea floor. By 2024, Portugal needs to replace the fiber-optic cables that connect the mainland with the Azores and Madras islands. This ocean infrastructure operates above the tectonic plates of the 1755 earthquake. Paros plans to integrate seismic sensors into the new cables, giving Lisbon a few seconds of warning before earthquakes. That could be enough time, Barros says, to stop trains or warn doctors not to put their scalpels down. It could provide locals a few precious minutes off the tsunami path. “The possibility of a few more seconds … that’s important for every Portuguese,” he says.

Standing in Praça do Comércio in Lisbon today, it’s hard to imagine the suffering that has engulfed this beautiful waterfront square over the centuries. Slaves arrived here from Africa to be treated and pressured into labor. Religious infidels were burned in brutal cars. In 1755, a six-meter high tsunami engulfed a terrified crowd. Pombal then used devastation as a starting point for building the first modern city in Europe. Lisbon’s future, like its past, appears to be tied to the disaster and the innovation it stirs up.

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