Earthquake rocks Lisbon waking people with ‘terrifying shakes’

The Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) confirmed the quake at 7:44 a.m. (6:44 a.m. GMT) which was felt in the capital Lisbon.

It registered 4.3 on the Richter scale.

A Macau resident, who’s currently in Portugal vacationing in a place just 10km away from the seismic epicenter, near Torres Vedras, told the Times that “I’ve felt it. It was like a small explosion followed by a strong shake that made us [the family] wake up.”

A Lisbon resident living at the heart of the city’s old neighborhoods also said that the quake “awoke the family because the walls were shaking for a few seconds.”

The seismic activity reached as far as far Coimbra, some 150km north of Lisbon, seismographer Fernando Carrilho from the IPMA, told RTP, Portugal’s public TV broadcaster. Carrilho added that the earthquake “was felt in several districts of Portugal from Setubal to Coimbra.”

The accident echoed promptly on social media. Some reports suggest the shaking lasted somewhere between 4 and 10 seconds.

Lara Marcos took to Twitter saying: “An earthquake just happened here in Portugal that was crazy its like 8am.”

Ana Portugal tweeted: “Just felt an #earthquake after waking up. Tiny, but always scary considering #lisbon1755.”

The hashtag is a reference to the 1755 quake which devastated the city causing a tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people.

Yesterday’s earthquake made the headlines in the UK where The Sun website reported that, “Portugal earthquake rocks Lisbon waking up Brit tourists with ‘terrifying shake’.”

No casualties have been reported by the Portuguese authorities.

Meanwhile, the country has been facing a spate of wildfires. Yesterday, the government took the rare step of decreeing a state of public calamity before a forecast rise in temperatures.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s office said in a statement that he will meet with heads of the emergency services, including the armed forces, today to prepare for a weekend rise in temperatures to around 40 degrees Celsius.

A public calamity allows authorities to mobilize emergency assets and quicken reaction times.

Portugal has been fighting woodland blazes for weeks, including one in June that killed 64 people.

The government said yesterday the most worrying areas are in the north and center of the country, as well as western parts of the Algarve on the southern coast. PC/Agencies