Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Great Lisbon Earthquake

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

On the morning of November 1, 1755, the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal set out to go to church for the feast of All Saints Day. Little did they know that moments later, their lives and the lives of everyone in Lisbon were about to be turned upside down and that the city of Lisbon would almost cease to exist. Learn more about the Great Lisbon Earthquake, one of the most devastating earthquakes in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the morning of November 1st, 1755, the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal, set out to go to church for the feast of All Saints Day. Little did they know that moments later, their lives and the lives of everyone in Lisbon were about to be turned upside down and that the city of Lisbon would almost cease to exist. Learn more about the great Lisbon earthquake, one of the most devastating earthquakes in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

This episode is sponsored by Expedia's OutTravel the System podcast. I know you love to hear the story behind the story. So let me tell you why I think you might want to listen to the Expedia podcast. podcast, Out Travel the System. This season alone, the show talks to someone on a mission to visit every country in the world. In case you're wondering, the tally stands at 194 out of 197 countries. There's the man who's visited and stayed at literally thousands of hotels, who share some of his favorite unique accommodations and experiences. Or how about the woman who has reached some deep philosophical conclusions about travel and privilege in no small part because of the pandemic?

Get all of this and more when you tune into the show, including larger, insights about the future of travel, as well as tips and tricks to maximize your savings for your next trip, whenever you feel ready to head out into the world again. You can find Out Travel the System on your podcast platform of choice. There have been many large earthquakes throughout history. Many of them share very common stories in terms of the devastation in which they left behind. What sets the Great Lisbon earthquake apart from other such disasters is that it was really three different disasters that hit the city on the same day. All three disasters had the same genesis, but the sequence in which they hit the city made the day far

more deadly than it would have been otherwise. As I mentioned in the introduction, November 1st was a holy day on the Catholic calendar, which meant that everyone was supposed to attend church that morning. This actually is an important fact that will play into the story later. The population of Lisbon in 1755 was approximately 275,000 people. Lisbon was the capital of the Portuguese Empire, which held territory in Europe, South Africa, Africa, Asia, and many smaller islands in between. This made Lisbon one of the most important cities in the world at the time. At 9.30 a.m., as people were going to or attending church, the first tremor struck. They were loud and noticeable, but they didn't cause much in the way of destruction. The consul from the city of Hamburg,

Germany, later reported, quote, we first heard a rumble like the noise of a carriage, and it became louder and louder until it was as loud as the loudest noise of a gun. Immediately after that, we felt the first tremble, unquote. Based on what happened, modern estimates are that there was a slip in the Azores-Jubraltar transform fault. This is a fault line that runs approximately from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Azor Islands. One tectonic plate was thrust over another, and the movement of land might have been as much as one kilometer. The epicenter of the earthquake was believed to have been just off the southwestern most point of Portugal near Cape St. Vincent. At 9.40 a.m., the main earthquake hit. Church bells began ringing all over the city, and just as quickly,

buildings began to collapse. The churches, which were full of people, were the largest source of casualties. For a period of 10 minutes, there were three major quakes that shook the city to its foundations. It's estimated that the earthquake measured 8.4 on the Richter scale. Just to give you an idea of how much the ground moved. In the middle of Lisbon City Center, there were fissures in the ground, five meters or 16 feet wide. The earthquake was the first of the three disasters. As the quake was in progress, people rushed outside of their homes and buildings and ran to open areas where there was less chance of getting hit by falling debris. The main open area was along the coast near the port. As people began crawling out of the rubble and assembling along the shore, they noticed something

very strange happening. The sea receded. The ocean, which had been right in front of them, disappeared. What was now in front of them, was a giant plain of mud. All of the sunken ships and debris which had been thrown into the sea over the centuries were suddenly visible. What was happening was the beginning of the second disaster, a tsunami. Approximately 40 minutes after the earthquake struck at around 10.30 a.m., the waterfront was struck by a massive 12-meter 40-foot-high wall of water. The water engulfed the port in the city center, flooding much of the collapsed ruins which had fallen less than an hour earlier.

People who were trapped in the rubble, shockingly enough, may have actually died from drowning. Water flowed up the Tagas River so fast that it kept pace with horses that were running at a full gallop. After being hit by an earthquake and a tsunami in the space of an hour, the third disaster began to unfold. In the homes and churches which weren't flooded with seawater, the candles which were burning and the cooking fires which were ablaze started fires that began to spread throughout the city.

Because everything was a pile of rubble at this point, little effort was made to put out the fire. It would have been near impossible to do so even if they had wanted to, given the difficulty of navigating the streets filled with rubble. The fire burned so hot that it created a firestorm. It was so intense and consumed so much oxygen that people, People were killed from asphyxiation who were 30 meters away from the fire. The fire burned out of control for five days. In the end, 85% of the city had been destroyed, including all of the city center, the port,

and most of the infrastructure involved in the running of the Portuguese Empire. The royal palace was demolished by both the earthquake and the tsunami. The Imperial Library lost over 70,000 books. Many works of art by great European masters were lost forever. The total number of deaths was estimated to be between 30 to 50,000 people. The earthquake didn't just affect Lisbon, however. It also affected cities all along the coast of Portugal. The city of Elgarve was devastated, as were many other smaller communities in the south.

There may also have been as many as 10,000 people killed along the coast of Morocco. The tsunami went across the Atlantic Ocean, causing damage to islands in the Caribbean and in Brazil. The ramifications of the earthquake were why. reaching and affected places around the world far removed from Portugal. For starters, in the aftermath of the earthquake, there was a semi-organized relief effort. In the past, if something like this had happened, everyone would have mostly been on their own. Prime Minister Sebastio Delmello organized the relief efforts, including an organized corpse removal to avoid adding a fourth disaster to the city, disease. He did mass burials at sea to quickly and efficiently remove bodies,

even over objections from the Catholic Church. He organized teams of firefighters once the initial firestorm died down. The army was brought in to deter looting, and gallows were actually constructed in public areas around the town to discourage looting. On December 4th, barely a month later, plans were unveiled for a new Lisbon. The new city of Lisbon was started from scratch with new wide streets. Unlike most European capitals, Lisbon is laid out like a modern planned city for this reason. The new buildings which were erected in Lisbon are known as Pomboline buildings. named after the Marquis de Pommel, who was the chief city planner for the new Lisbon.

Pombline buildings were some of the first in the world to be built to resist seismic forces. They were also prefabricated, which allowed much of Lisbon to be rebuilt in record time. The earthquake also was the beginning of the modern science of seismology, or the study of earthquakes. A survey was sent out to all the parishes in Portugal, asking them for information on how their location experienced the earthquake. They tried to systematically understand how the earthquake happened and how it propagated around the country. The data collected in this survey is still located in the Portuguese archives and has been studied by modern scientists to try to recreate exactly what happened. The other area affected by the earthquake was theology and philosophy.

This disaster occurred during the Enlightenment. There was a movement underway to try to understand the world through natural explanations, not just through theological ones. Normally after a disaster, it would be explained that it was God's punishment for the sins of the people affected. There were some people in Lisbon who tried to argue that this was God's wrath, but they had a hard time explaining why all the cathedrals were destroyed, but most of the brothels were spared. Likewise, some Protestants in Northern Europe tried to use the earthquake to prove that the Catholic Church was not favored by God. However, most scholars came to view this as simply a natural disaster.

This is one of the first times a natural disaster was thought of as such, and at why the 1755 earthquake has been called the world's first modern disaster. I should note that while this was the worst earthquake to hit Lisbon and southern Portugal, it wasn't the first or only one. There were other earthquakes in 1321, 1531, and 1969. As with most cities in earthquake zones, it's likely that there will be another major earthquake at some point in the future for Lisbon. Next time, however, due to better construction, better planning, and better warning systems, Lisbon hopefully will never suffer the fate that it did 226 years ago.

The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show. Thank you.