The warning was made by specialist Cristina Oliveira, who recalled that this week marks the 261st anniversary of the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
Ms. Oliveira is a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal’s School of Technology, in Barreiro, and travelled to the Italian village of Amatrice this past summer following the devastating 6.2 magnitude tremor there on August 24 which killed 300 people, to study the effects of the quake on the region’s buildings.
Italy has recently experienced three more large-scale earthquakes, having registered two last Wednesday and a 6.5 magnitude quake on Sunday, in the Norcia region, which caused significantly less damage than in Amatrice.
The specialist in antiseismic construction and protection said this is largely because for the past 40 years Norcia has been employing a structural repair and reinforcement law to protect against tremors; a plan she believes Portugal would do well to follow.
In her opinion, even the antiseismic structures built in the Portuguese capital following the 1755 earthquake have gradually become warped.
“We don’t know what conditions those buildings are in, nothing has been assessed, work has been done on the quiet”, she stressed, adding: “We could suffer a very high magnitude earthquake at any moment. We know we can’t avoid it but we can avoid the consequences, reinforcing homes and having an adequate attitude to deal with a quake.”
But, she said, as nothing has been done “if we do have an earthquake, all it would take is one the same as what struck Italy and Lisbon would be razed. We are not prepared at all.”
The expert believes there are many types of reinforcements that could be applied to properties in the capital and for which the work would be no more expensive than any other aesthetic work to buildings.
In her opinion, transformational work including closing in balconies, knocking down walls and creating ‘open space’ areas could be carried out without bearing the potentially devastating effects of what an earthquake in the capital would entail.
In Portugal people “renovate homes by doing them up”, she reflected, adding: “There is a concern with energy certificated but no one worries about the structural side of things, even though having that security [such as changing doors and windows, for example] would be no more expensive than certifying energy use.”