I was planning on posting more photographs of around the farm today, but yesterday morning a water carrying tunnel connecting the dams of Santa Luzia and Alto Ceira near to us broke, causing a torrent of water to come crashing out. The resultant flooding, from the ruptured tunnel and from the subsequent emergency lowering of the water in the dam, has been creating dramatic scenes locally, all the way along the route of the Rio Ceira as far as Coimbra. So, I’m taking opportunity to share some of the amazing photos of those scenes today instead.
The scene of the ruptured pipe, between Cambas and Porto da Valsa (Photo credits Ricardo Dias)
Downriver at Gois (Photo credits Miguel Mourão)
And at Ceira, near Coimbra (Photo credits Jose Santos)
By sheer luck it would appear that there has been no loss of life or injury as a result of this rupture. Imagine if this had happened at ten on a Saturday evening instead of at eight on a Saturday morning? There are three bars on that stretch of the Ceira at Gois alone.
Already I’m reading about blame and compensation, and no doubt that discussion will continue long after the water recedes. I do hope though that the engineers and planners are already at work checking out the rest of this infrastructure. If you’re going to try and tame mother nature, you’d be better be damned sure you do it properly.
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