Socialist leader José Luís Carneiro is appealing to the government ‘not to abandon Almada’, struggling as it is with the consequences of landslides in the residential area of Porto Brandão, requiring the mass evacuation of around 500 residents.
“What is happening in Almada is very serious”, he said. “The government should not be leaving a mayor to deal with a drama of this nature alone.”
As reports elsewhere have been explaining, the situation of Porto Brandão is dire. Earth movements are ongoing. It is highly likely that many of the area’s residents will lose their homes entirely.
“Only an insensitive government could leave a mayor to deal with this on her own,” Carneiro reiterated, with the mayor, Inês Medeiros, looking extremely overwhelmed beside him.
Público today explains that some homes in the neighbourhood have already been ‘destroyed’, others will almost certainly be deemed uninhabitable.
Mayor Medeiros is formulating a request to the government to declare a situation of calamity in Almada. She confirmed that the situation in Porto Brandão is “probably the most critical in the borough (…) We are talking of a large mass of earth that is at risk of giving way, and the need to remove people who probably will never be able to return to their homes.”
Image: Câmara Municipal de Almada Facebook
The problem – and how to deal with it in the long term – is not something Almada town council can handle on its own, the mayor added. Secretaries of state are ‘aware’ of the dimension of this situation, she said – but nothing sufficient has been done ‘politically’. Porto Brandão will need interventions that take months – and then there is a similar situation of danger to residents living under the cliffs in Costa da Caparica (where there has already been a landslide that required residents being evacuated).
José Luís Carneiro’s hope is that the government will send a multidisciplinary team to support the many people who literally have no idea how their lives are going to work now.
“People are in stress, the parish council president, the mayor, the people who are living through this personal drama, families who literally feel abandoned,” the Socialist leader told reporters. “My appeal is to the government to place a team here that has psychologists, people from Social Security, Infrastructure and Housing” to “guarantee these people that the future is not as uncertain as they fear it is today (…) It is an appeal to those who have responsibilities in the country to not leave people abandoned.”
It was a very valid point – because so many television reports in the last week have described communities who feel just that: abandoned. There are too many now to mention, with the floodwaters still swirling around their homes.
Hopes are that the next 24-hours will see conditions finally start to stabilise (not in terms of Porto Brandão’s earth movements, but in terms of all the other communities waiting for answers).
The prime minister said yesterday in Alcácer do Sal that his government is working on a ‘Portuguese plan for Recovery and Resilience’. For an executive that is known to make grand announcements, everyone now awaits the ‘follow-through’ (the details/ the ‘how it will be done, how long it will take’).
José Luís Carneiro has also said he hopes his party will be able to give suggestions for what is the daunting task of rebuilding critical infrastructure in multiple areas, in such a way that it can withstand the next bout of extreme weather (which, after all, could come within months).
Source material: SIC/ Público
