Are there natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes, fire or hurricanes in Algarve?

There are natural disasters in Algarve but we have not had one for many centuries.  The entire country of Portugal is actually on an earthquake zone. The last major earthquake was in 1755, so it was clearly some time ago.

 

The Algarve gets tens, if not hundreds, of little ground tremors, which are sometimes too weak to be felt by a human being, but they do happen because we are on an earthquake zone. 

 

The Algarve is...

There are natural disasters in Algarve but we have not had one for many centuries.  The entire country of Portugal is actually on an earthquake zone. The last major earthquake was in 1755, so it was clearly some time ago.

 

The Algarve gets tens, if not hundreds, of little ground tremors, which are sometimes too weak to be felt by a human being, but they do happen because we are on an earthquake zone. 

 

The Algarve is not a flooding zone. The biggest risk or the biggest natural disaster, I would say, that the Algarve faces is brush fires. There are a lot of natural areas that are fairly dense with shrubs and bushes. Unfortunately, we have bush fires every 5 to 6 years. The bush fires here are not at the scale of the bush fires that happen in Australia or California but nonetheless, it is probably the biggest natural disaster on a local level. However, very rarely does a home get damaged by bush fires. The last that I remember where a house got burned or damaged by a bush fire happened around 10 years ago when there was a bush fire in the Eastern Algarve. Because the fires mostly happen in the densely foliated areas, the density of homes in these areas is also very low. The loss of property is fortunately low and the loss of life is very rare. There could be a loss of sheep or cattle, which are generally a loss of natural environment rather than a physical, material, or human loss.

 

Relevant to flooding, about two months ago, Algarve had probably one of the worst floods that occurred in Albufeira in living memory. Generally, flooding is not common here in the Algarve because we are in an area where there is very little rain. We are always praying for rain. What happens in some coastal towns, because they built their buildings very close to the water, is that they get flooded when it is a high tide and it is a full moon. This is what happened in Albufeira a few months ago. There are other villages that are prone to flooding such as Ferragudo, and the downtown area of Tavira. So, overall, there are one or two towns or villages that can be flooded but flooding is not a common thing.

 

Relative to hurricanes, they don’t happen here in Portugal. We send them towards the US; we don’t receive them. The hurricanes start typically in an area near the Cape Verde Islands, then tend to go towards the West Coast of Africa, and then towards the East Coast of the US. We have high winds and we sometimes have windy days but gale force winds are very rare.

 

( Tile mural of Lisbon before the Portuguese earthquake in 1755, pictured.)