Big storms always reveal more than material damage. They reveal the real State – what decides, what takes time, what works and what fails. Kirstin’s depression made visible what is often only discussed in reports: Portugal has the means, but continues to stumble in the decision-making architecture in crisis.
The expression “invisibility”, used by the Minister of Internal Affairs to justify her absence on the ground in the first days and when the scale of the tragedy was already known, ends up being iconic. Not because the physical presence of a ruler resolves emergencies, but because in times of calamity the country needs to feel that someone is in command, deciding and taking responsibility. Invisibility can be a communication strategy, but in a crisis it can be perceived as an absence of leadership.
The problem, however, goes deeper than the media exposure of a minister who oversees Civil Protection and the Security Forces. It’s systemic.
The Portuguese civil protection model was designed to guarantee coordination, control and hierarchy. In a normal situation, this is a virtue. In an extreme situation, it can become an obstacle.
Long validation chains, requests that move up and down the hierarchy, multiple levels of articulation, all of this generates entropy. And entropy, in an emergency, is measured in time – and time, in a crisis, is measured in avoidable losses.
It was precisely at this point that a revealing sign of this crisis emerged: the Army’s decision to intensify direct support to the affected municipalities, designing means to support the populations more quickly.
In this context, the usual mediation of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC) and the General Staff of the Armed Forces – which generally regulate this collaboration – was suppressed.
Article 53 of the Basic Civil Protection Law It explicitly provides that, in case of clear urgency, mayors may request military support directly from units deployed in the area. The standard exists for situations in which the severity is not compatible with the usual route through the chain of command.
When the exception works better than the normal procedure, the problem is not with the exception, it is with the model. And the crisis showed something additional: when you simplify decisions and trust in execution, the answer appears.
The distance between central power and the ground became particularly visible in the dialogue between the Minister of Internal Administration and the president of the Chamber of Leiria. When the minister spoke of “collective learning, at local, central and societal level”, the mayor responded with another priority: “There is a great saturation that is starting to be very difficult to manage, and transparency is needed.”
The contrast is revealing. While the central power speaks of future lessons, the terrain calls for present responses. While the political discourse frames, local power generates exhaustion, expectations and concrete urgencies. This difference in perception is an indicator of friction in the system.
This leads to another inevitable reflection: who should be the face of the crisis response? Responsibility is always political, but operational command is not – and it is often preferable if it were not.
In calamity situations, the country benefits from visible, predictable and technically credible leadership. Not for media prominence, but to ensure public trust. An effective crisis face is someone who communicates clearly, recognizes uncertainty, reports regularly, and translates operational decisions into understandable messages.
Visibility here is an instrument of social coordination. Informed populations react better, local authorities plan better and agents on the ground operate with greater predictability. Where there is clear leadership, there is less entropy; where there is less entropy, the initiative stops being an exception and becomes a method.
Furthermore, each local authority in a risk area should know, before the next crisis, what resources it can count on, within what deadlines and through what channels. You should know activation protocols, direct contacts and resources available in your territory. Preparation reduces dependencies. Clarity reduces response time.
For those in the dark, the discussion about organizational charts is irrelevant. What counts is the speed of the solution.
Kristin therefore left a double lesson. It showed the weaknesses of a system that sometimes becomes entangled in itself. And it also showed that, when there is initiative, autonomy and focus on the essential, the State can be relevant.
The true contrast of this crisis was not between presence and absence. It was between invisibility and relevance. Between entropy and initiative. The storms will repeat themselves. The difference will be whether the State wants to remain invisible or whether it prefers to be relevant when that really counts.
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