Leiria, Portugal, Jan. 29, 2026 (Lusa) - The damage caused by Storm Kristin is incalculable and recovery could take a year, the mayor of Leiria, in central Portugal, has said.
In the second briefing of the day, on Wednesday evening, the socialist party (PS) mayor, Gonçalo Lopes told journalists that the assessment of the damage is still ongoing, but "it is very high".
"The damage has not yet been calculated, but it is impossible to estimate the impact it has had on people's lives. We have scenes straight out of a nightmare, with churches without roofs, sports halls without roofs, many houses without tiles, houses and cars completely destroyed, and cranes knocked down. It is a post-disaster scenario, very similar to what we usually see on television, in a war zone," he said.
The mayor added that a nursery school "disappeared in Coucinheira, in Amor".
Noting that "it will take many days to return to normality," the mayor warned that "the recovery plan will take more than a year to restore everything to normal."
"Our lives, starting today, have changed for the next few months," he said, appealing once again to the community's "sense of solidarity."
The "devastating scenario" hit "the city with greater intensity", although the entire region was affected.
According to the mayor, the damage is "enormous in terms of people's assets, who have been left without cars and with their homes destroyed".
"We do not have an exact idea of the scale of the problem, but you only need to walk for half an hour along the roads to realise the true extent of what is happening in Leiria. (...) A very large investment will be necessary, not only in the public sector, but above all in the economic and family sectors, so that these people can resume their lives as soon as possible," he stressed.
Gonçalo Lopes reiterated to the Government that it should declare a "state of calamity, opening up financial support for the recovery of the economy and the restoration of normal life".
The roof of the Leiria bus terminal collapsed, so it will be transferred to the Leiria Stadium car park, where a logistics centre will also operate, providing tarpaulins to those in need from this Thursday onwards.
The mayor corrected the number of deaths directly related to the storm to three, when he had initially indicated that there were four, noting that the Local Health Unit of the Leiria Region recorded "more than 100 incidents of injuries resulting from this phenomenon", with "one of the patients being evacuated by helicopter".
The sub-regional commander of emergency and civil protection in Leiria, Carlos Guerra, confirmed the "destruction trail" in the district of Leiria and neighbouring areas, which "were also affected by this storm".
"From a certain point onwards, the top priority for the operational staff was to pay the utmost attention to issues related to people's lives and safety," he explained, assuring that all pre-hospital emergency calls were followed up "with great effort".
Regarding the operational side, Carlos Guerra said that they had "some difficulties with mobile communications," but the "Siresp network remains operational."
(Siresp is the integrated emergency and security network system of Portugal, the State's exclusive communications network for the command, control and coordination of communications in all emergency and security situations).
"As you can understand, during those hours of stormy weather, it was humanly impossible to deploy resources on the ground to do anything in the face of the severity of the wind," he confessed, recalling that there were "gusts of 200 kilometres per hour".
Thus, once safety conditions were in place, all civil protection personnel, including the police, went into the field.
EYC/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
