In the early morning of November 23rd, a landslide occurred in the parish of Palmeira de Faro, Esposende, Braga district, killing a 22-year-old couple. In this context, the ANEPC – National Authority for Emergency and Civil Protection requested support from the University of Minho for technical rescue work and was the lecturer at the Department of Civil Engineering, Tiago Miranda, seconded by the University for this work.

Later, Professor Eduardo Pereira and Researcher Vítor Cunha, also from the Department of Civil Engineering, and Professor António Vieira from the Department of Geography of UMinho joined Professor Tiago Miranda to form the UMinho team to proceed with the requested work. These consisted in the support to the coordination of the removal of the dead victims, the provisional stabilization of the collapsed slope and the assessment of the need for temporary eviction of families from houses close to the collapse due to the risk of further instability.

Following this evaluation, a state of alert was declared and 8 families were provisionally displaced until a technical evaluation, also requested to UMinho, assessed the degree of risk inherent to the work, which has already been completed.

Meanwhile, the Esposende City Hall requested to UMinho and to LNEC – National Laboratory of Civil Engineering, a study to determine the most probable causes for what happened and, in the person of the Mayor of Esposende, a special thanks to Professor Tiago Miranda and other elements of the DEC for the technical support, “availability, professionalism and sense of responsibility shown to such a delicate situation were and continue to be crucial throughout this process.”

The Presidency of EEUM and the Department of Civil Engineering congratulate professor Tiago Miranda “for this (one more) interaction with the community that gives us so much prestige”.