Earthquake, tsunami, flood and fire, these are not the first things that came to mind when I arrived in Lisbon. But it turns out that back in 1755 the city was almost destroyed by this very sequence of events. One morning, the sea bed 120 miles southwest of the city shifted, and the resulting wave surged inland, reaching well in to the countryside. Once the waters receded, people fled from high ground to the port, only to be drowned by subsequent waves, waves so strong and fast they were difficult for even horses to outrun. Fires then broke out and raged for five days, reducing much of the city to ash. Recent reviews of historical records suggest the quake was felt (and the waves travelled) as far as Brazil.
The destruction was extensive; most of Lisbon’s buildings were leveled or burned, including the palace, the royal library, the royal hospital and most churches. While the royal family escaped physically unharmed, the king was psychologically traumatized, and responsibility for the city’s recovery fell on the shoulders of the prime minister, the Marquis de Pombal. After a year spent assessing the damage and possible recovery strategies, the city’s planner presented the Marquis with four options ranging from reinforcing existing structures to razing large sections of town and rebuilding without restraint. The Marquis chose to begin anew, ordered that debris be cleared from the city, and had it rebuilt, with the new masonry buildings constructed with internal wooden support cages, the first seismically protected structures in Europe.
These days we take it for granted that after a disaster, teams of government, insurance and public health impact assessors will swarm the area, determining the extent of damage and injury. But this had never been done before 1755. After the quake, the Marquis of Pombal took the then-unusual step to do just that, dispatching letters to all the parishes in the land requesting information regarding the quake and its after-effects. The questions were both scientific (When did the ground began to shake? How long did it last? Did the sea rise or fall, how many times, and how high or far?) and practical (How many deaths and how much structural damage did your locality experience?) and the Marquis used these reports to respond to the disaster. At some point they had found their way to Portugal’s National Archives, and this is where the final presenter of the day, an engineering professor interested in natural disasters, had found them.
The project was two-fold: historical research using machine-learning techniques. The researcher and his students had been granted access to the files, used an optical scanner to ‘read’ the text, and then sought to see patterns in the data. At the time of the presentation his team was in the midst of their analysis, and his talk focused on their progress rather than their findings. There were gaps in the records; over time many had been lost, damaged, or returned to their home parish and lost to time. The reports were in an older version of Portuguese, one not fully compatible with modern language interpretation programs. In addition, the script of the day was highly stylized (especially the letter ’s’), and this posed challenges for the machine learning algorithms they were using to translate the documents. Once these processes are complete and reports are assembled and translated, they will be available for advanced data analysis. After short remarks to close the day, we retired to the courtyard for fado and a local port wine.
The school was built on the crest of a hill that overlooked the Rio Tajo, and had large cement apartments not blocked the view, on a clear day we could have seen the harbor. The area had originally been a country estate, and the sixteenth-century manor house was now the school’s executive offices and meeting rooms. The school’s courtyard had been the home’s garden, and features, including a fountain and gazebo, were still in place. The dining rooms and the garden of this structure was where we took our meals, and in this case, our music. During the afternoon sessions tents had been erected to shade us, and we sat, warm summer breeze on our shoulders, discussing the day’s lectures and catching up on each others’ research. Once dizzy with wine, I began to explore the grounds, the frescoes on the courtyard walls, the flower beds, a small gazebo. I was delighted when I discovered the veranda of the main house, and its view of neighboring orchards and a sliver of water in the distance.
But it was not to last. Overcome with fatigue, I returned to the hotel, hoping for some sleep.
More next week!