Heavy rains on Monday night caused more flooding and major traffic disruptions in Lisbon, which was already a victim of bad weather last week that left one dead, local authorities said.
The Portuguese capital’s municipal council issued a red alert and called on residents to “avoid travel”, while most roads leading to the city center were blocked or difficult to use.
“There are submerged tunnels that we had to close and this creates chaos,” Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas told CNN Portugal early in the morning.
As of noon, about 5,000 firefighters and rescuers have carried out nearly 1,500 interventions due to numerous floods, fallen trees or landslides, including more than 800 in the metropolitan area, confirmed the National Commander of the Civil Protection Service, André Fernandez, at a news conference.
And he warned that the weather forecast is of “heavy and continuous rain” until dawn on Wednesday.
– Manholes saturated –
Between Monday 9:00 a.m. and Tuesday 9:00 a.m., it rained “almost” as much as “the whole month of December,” explained AFP meteorologist Nuno Lopez, of the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA). ).
“The place where it has ever rained the most is the city of Lisbon,” he said, noting that it had previously rained with a similar intensity as far back as 2008.
Last week, heavy rains that fell from Wednesday to Thursday night caused great flooding, caused great damage, besides the death of a woman, who was found drowned in a cellar in the Al-Jis area located in the town of Oeiras. in the western suburbs of the capital.
On Tuesday, this region along the Tagus River was among the hardest hit.
At the end of the morning, under a continuous downpour, the center of Alges was still soaked in places, in several tens of centimeters of water, which made the railway station inaccessible and forced the streets to be closed to vehicular traffic, observed by AFP journalists Press.
Dozens of municipal employees, equipped with mops and buckets, attempted to clear water and mud from homes, businesses, and roads, as manholes became saturated.
– ‘Water flows into my house’ –
“I saw the water level outside rising and suddenly, around 3:30 in the morning, the water rushed into my house and took everything in its path. I couldn’t do anything and took refuge with my wife and son on the first floor,” testified Gil Catuño, a 18-year-old Brazilian 42 years old.
And while the water level did indeed reach 90 centimeters in his home last week, damaging his home appliances, this time it reached 1.50 metres, leaving a clear mark on the walls.
The Municipal Council of Oeiras recommended “all people stay at home” and even decided to close schools due to traffic disruptions on the roads.
On the northern outskirts of Lisbon, the municipality of Llores was hit hard.
In neighboring Spain, several routes have been made in the Extremadura region, which borders Portugal, according to the authorities.
