Storm Kristin was not just an episode of bad weather, it was a clear warning in which, for days, part of Portugal lived without water, without communications, without visible coordination and in the dark. There was no clear information about what was happening or what could happen next. The response was summed up in an SMS indicating winds of up to 140km/h, as if a technical number were enough to guide concrete decisions.
But 140km/h is not a statistical detail. It means roofs ripped off, trees falling on houses and cars, pavilions collapsing, power lines in the ground and prolonged power, water and communications outages. An effective alert is not just about informing. It explains consequences, guides behavior and helps people protect themselves. This is how you build trust and avoid chaos.
In an event with thousands of incidents and hundreds of thousands of people affected, a structural problem became evident. The State does not know the territory it governs well enough. IPMA warned in advance, but lacked the capacity to transform this warning into concrete action. Knowing where the impact would be most severe, which infrastructures would be most vulnerable, which populations would be most at risk and where to position resources before the storm arrived, would have made all the difference, but it didn’t exist.
This knowledge does not arise unexpectedly. It requires basic instruments that remain in short supply. Portugal does not have an updated multifunctional registry that brings together, in an integrated manner, information on buildings, energy and communications networks, land use, access, forest areas and inhabited areas. Without this portrait of the territory, one governs blindly and always reacts after the problem has arisen.
The absence of detailed climate risk maps further exacerbates this fragility. Without them, we cannot anticipate where the wind knocks down poles, where the rain cuts roads or where the fall of a tree isolates an entire parish. Without anticipation, the response always arrives late and costs more, in money, in wear and tear and in suffering.
It is not asked to avoid storms. The State is asked to know the places where it is vulnerable before failing, as planning and prevention save resources, reduce damage and protect lives. These are political choices and not just natural fatalities.
On the ground, local authorities, firefighters and Civil Protection improvised, hastily installed generators and made difficult decisions with limited resources. They did their best, however, the problem was higher up, in the absence of clear political direction, effective national coordination and structural instruments that allow for anticipation rather than remediation.
The public actions of some ministers further aggravated the Government’s feeling of detachment from reality. Instead of clear leadership, there were staged visits, vague statements and framing designed for photography and not to explain decisions, resources on the ground or response deadlines. In an emergency with isolated populations and basic services interrupted, populist choreographies proved to be unseemly, offensive and irresponsible.
Without a multifunctional registry and multisectoral risk maps, including climate risks, the country will continue to treat crises as isolated accidents. It will only respond after the impact, with improvisation, vague communications and late visits to the field. It will continue to confuse alerts with statistics and governance with damage management.
Kristin showed the strength of the wind, but above all it revealed the fragility of a State that does not know its territory and does not learn from what has already happened. In a time of increasingly frequent weather extremes, this warning should not be ignored, as the cost of the next storm could be even greater.
E-governance specialist
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