The municipality of Mesão Frio expects, in an initial estimate, that the damage caused by the bad weather will exceed three million euros within the municipality, including roads, public facilities, or walls and vineyard slopes that have collapsed.
The president of the Mesão Frio City Council, Paulo Silva, told the Lusa agency yesterday that an initial survey of the damage caused by heavy rain, accompanied by wind, points to losses surpassing three million euros, potentially reaching 3.5 million euros.
The mayor explained that municipal technicians traveled around the municipality for a first survey, which has already been forwarded to the Ministry of Economy and Territorial Cohesion.
Paulo Silva said that the weather events caused landslides and slope failures, wall collapses, which translated into roads being closed or restricted, road subsidence, vineyards affected, as well as houses and even public facilities, such as sports facilities.
In this municipality there are about 900 viticulturists, of whom 90% have less than one hectare, and the vineyard area is around one thousand hectares. About 3,400 inhabitants live here.
The traditional schist walls (stone laid), which support the terraces of the demarcated region, are one of the defining features of the Alto Douro Vinhateiro, classified by UNESCO in 2001.
To recover the damages that “far exceed” the municipality’s response capacity, the mayor appealed for national solidarity, defending concrete support to help both the municipalities and the affected farmers.
“There must be strong support from the State. This is a council that has a very small budget; from the State we receive a little more than six million euros and we essentially live on funds from the State,” he said.
The Mesão Frio City Council approved a budget of around 13 million euros for 2026, with four million coming from European Union funds for works.
Paulo Silva also warned about the high cost of replacing the schist walls and noted that, with low incomes, many viticulturists lack the capacity to recover them.
Eighteen people died in Portugal following the passage of the low‑pressure systems Kristin, Leonardo, and Marta, which also caused hundreds of injuries and displacements.
The total or partial destruction of homes, businesses and equipment, the falling of trees and structures, the closure of roads, schools and transport services, and the outages of electricity, water and communications, floods and inundations are the main material consequences of the storm.
The Central, Lisbon and Tagus Valley and Alentejo regions were the most affected.
The calamity situation that encompassed the 68 most affected municipalities ended on February 15.
