What the official statistics say about safety here

What the crime figures actually say

The Relatório Anual de Segurança Interna for 2025, published at the end of March 2026, records 6,630 participations*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 in the Autonomous Region of Madeira against 365,802 participations*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 nationally. The regional total fell -3.6%*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 on the year while the national total rose +3.1%*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 — a divergence the report itself notes, remarking on the falls in the autonomous regions.

Absolute counts are not comparable across populations, and RASI does not convert them. INE does. Its crime-rate indicator puts the Region at 24.9 per 1,000 inhabitants*, source: INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística), 2025, read August 26, 2026 against 32.0 per 1,000 inhabitants*, source: INE, 2025, read August 26, 2026 for Portugal and 35.7 per 1,000 inhabitants*, source: INE, 2025, read August 26, 2026 for the Azores. Madeira holds roughly a fortieth of the country's population and accounts for a smaller share than that of its recorded crime.

Violent crime is a small and flat fraction

RASI's Madeira annex separates violent and serious crime from the general total. It came to 212 offences*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 of the 6,630 participations*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026 recorded in 2025, and the ten-year series in the same annex shows it moving within a narrow band since 2016 rather than trending. The largest single categories were street robbery and bag-snatching, in the dozens rather than the hundreds.

It is concentrated where the people are

Funchal accounts for 3,196 participations*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026, roughly half the regional total, which tracks its share of the population. On INE's municipal rates every municipality in the Region sits below the national rate, from 31.1 per 1,000 residents*, source: INE, 2025, read August 26, 2026 in Porto Santo at the top to 14.3 per 1,000 residents*, source: INE, 2025, read August 26, 2026 in São Vicente at the bottom.

That Porto Santo figure needs a caveat rather than a headline. The rate divides crimes by resident population, and Porto Santo has a very small resident base and a large seasonal visitor population that the denominator ignores. The same distortion applies in a milder form to Funchal. A tourist municipality will always look worse on a per-resident rate than it is.

Two arms of the state publish different rates for the same year

This is the sort of thing that usually gets tidied away, and it should not be.

For 2024, DREM published a Madeira crime rate of 26.5 per 1,000*, source: DREM (Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira), 2024, read August 26, 2026 against a national 33.0 per 1,000*, source: DREM, 2024, read August 26, 2026. INE, for the same year, publishes 26.0 per 1,000*, source: INE, 2024, read August 26, 2026 against a national 31.2 per 1,000*, source: INE, 2024, read August 26, 2026.

The crime counts underlying both are identical — the same regional and national totals appear in RASI, in INE and in DREM's release. What differs is the denominator. INE's series is internally consistent on a revised, larger resident population published after DREM's release. So the two figures are not a contradiction in the data; they are the same crimes divided by two different population estimates, one of which is newer.

The consequence for a reader is simple and worth stating: the direction holds and the decimal does not. Madeira sits meaningfully below the national rate on either source. Anyone quoting one of these rates to two decimal places, without saying which body produced it, does not know which number they are holding.

What is not measured, and cannot be inferred

Three gaps matter more than most of what is published.

Madeira's homicide count is withheld

In INE's 2025 table the cell for completed voluntary homicide in Madeira contains a suppression marker rather than a number, where the national figure is 98*, source: INE, 2025, read August 26, 2026. RASI's Madeira annex lists only the six most frequent violent crime categories, the smallest of which stands at 8 offences*, source: Sistema de Segurança Interna, 2025, read August 26, 2026. The regional homicide count is therefore below that figure and is otherwise not published. This page does not give one.

Crime against visitors is not measured anywhere

RASI discusses pickpocketing as a phenomenon associated with large urban centres and tourist destinations, but reports it only by district, with no Madeira breakdown. INE's victim indicators disaggregate by sex and offence category only — there is no nationality field, no residency field and no visitor flag, and they count victims in tried cases rather than recorded crimes.

So no honest statement can be made about what share of crime here is committed against visitors, in either direction. Any page that gives one has invented it.

Domestic violence is the exception that is measured

DREM reports that police in the Region identified 1,000 people*, source: DREM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 of domestic violence against a spouse or equivalent in 2024, 115*, source: DREM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 fewer than the year before, of whom 73.2%*, source: DREM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 were women. It is the one category with a clear regional series, and it is larger than the entire violent-crime total for the same period, which is a comment on how the two are counted rather than a paradox.

The hazard the Region itself rates most severe

The Plano Regional de Emergência de Proteção Civil, third revision, in force since July 2024, carries a risk matrix scoring each hazard on probability and severity. Flash flooding in the ribeiras is the only natural hazard to receive the highest severity rating alongside windstorms. Landslides, rural wildfire and coastal overtopping carry the highest probability rating at a lower severity. Earthquake is rated medium probability at high severity. Volcanic activity sits at the bottom on both.

The regional flood plan describes the mechanism in its own words: flooding here comes mostly from rapid floods produced by episodes of very intense rainfall on small catchments with short concentration times, giving a torrential regime, sometimes devastating, frequently carrying a heavy solid load. That last clause is the important one, and it is why the local word for the event is aluvião rather than flood.

20 February 2010, and a death toll that depends on which government is asked

The European Commission, awarding Solidarity Fund assistance, recorded 42 people*, source: European Commission, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026. The Madeira regional government's own table, published in the regional gazette as part of the first flood-risk management plan, records 48 mortos*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026.

Both are official. Neither is a press figure. The reconciliation usually offered, confirmed dead plus missing, is arithmetically plausible and could not be sourced to any official document, so it is not asserted here. The honest answer is that the toll is 42 to 48*, source: European Commission / Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026 depending on which official source is read.

The Commission's assessment also records 153 bridges*, source: European Commission, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026 damaged and 400 houses*, source: European Commission, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026 destroyed or severely damaged, with total direct damage put by the Portuguese authorities at €1,080,000,000*, source: European Commission, 20 February 2010, read August 26, 2026 and Solidarity Fund assistance of €31,255,790*, source: European Commission, 2010, read August 26, 2026.

Where the risk is mapped now

The current plan, covering 2022 to 2027, identifies 63 areas*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 in the Region, 29 areas*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 of them fluvial and 34 areas*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 coastal. The first cycle had identified 27 areas*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2016-2021, read August 26, 2026. The named first-cycle watercourses run through the middle of the populated south: the Ribeiras de João Gomes, Santa Luzia and São João in Funchal, the Ribeira dos Socorridos between Funchal and Câmara de Lobos, the Ribeira Brava, the Ribeira de Machico and the Ribeira do Porto Novo among them.

The plan also publishes resident density inside the hundred-year inundation area, which is the number that turns a map into a property question. Ribeira Brava records 1,523 residents per km²*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 and Machico 1,017 residents per km²*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026, against 111 residents per km²*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 in Funchal. The exposure is not evenly spread, and it is highest in two towns people move to precisely because they are not Funchal, a point that belongs alongside the comparison of places to live and how a purchase actually runs.

Landslides, and why they are the same event

The regional flood plan is explicit that these are not two hazards. An aluvião is torrential flow carrying a heavy load, much of it derived from mass movement on the slopes flanking the watercourse, and the trigger for both the flow and the slope failure is the same: a large quantity of rain in a short time.

The civil protection plan maps susceptibility rather than frequency. High susceptibility appears across much of the island, concentrated in the centre — the plan names the parishes of Curral das Freiras, Serra de Água and Ponta do Sol, where the steepest slopes coincide. Smaller high-susceptibility areas run along the coast where there are cliffs, at Ponta do Pargo and Achadas da Cruz, and north of Santana and Machico. Moderate susceptibility is widespread, with the urbanised lowlands of Funchal, Santa Cruz, Machico, Santana and São Vicente, the Paúl da Serra plateau and Porto Santo mostly in the low class.

What the official material does not contain is a count. Susceptibility mapping answers where, not how often or how many people. No official count of rockfall incidents or rockfall casualties in Madeira could be found, so none is given, and any specific figure circulating elsewhere has come from press coverage rather than from a record.

Wildfire, and the national statistics that leave Madeira out

This is the single most consequential trap on the subject. ICNF's national wildfire statistics, the figures quoted whenever Portugal burns, cover Portugal Continental and exclude Madeira entirely. The workbook's own sheet names say so, its district breakdown contains only the eighteen mainland districts, and its reports are titled accordingly. A national burnt-area figure for Portugal has never included this island.

Madeira's own series comes from IFCN through DREM. For 2024 it records 38 fires*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 burning 5,190 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2024, read August 26, 2026, of which 3,495 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 was scrubland. Fires occurred in nine of the eleven municipalities; Funchal and Santana recorded none. Ribeira Brava was worst affected with 2,509 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2024, read August 26, 2026, close to half the regional total.

The longer series is extremely uneven, which is the honest shape of wildfire risk here. A handful of years dominate: 6,270 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2016, read August 26, 2026 in 2016 and 8,632 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2010, read August 26, 2026 in 2010, against years in the same decade that recorded under a hundred hectares in total. Annual averages on this data mislead badly.

The August 2024 fire

Copernicus Emergency Management Service was activated by Portugal's national civil protection command and mapped the burnt extent at 5,104.1 hectares*, source: Copernicus Emergency Management Service, August 2024, read August 26, 2026, delineated from satellite imagery at the end of August 2024. That figure and the 5,190 hectares*, source: DREM / IFCN, IP-RAM, 2024, read August 26, 2026 annual total above are close for the obvious reason, one event dominated the year, but they measure different things and must never be added together.

Daily fire risk for the island is published by IPMA on a separate product from the mainland one, as a Fire Weather Index map for the archipelago rather than the mainland's per-municipality index. IFCN links to that page as its own operational source.

Earthquake, sea, and the rest

Madeira sits in the lowest seismic zone in the Portuguese national annex to Eurocode 8. Every municipality in the Region falls in zone 1.6, with a reference ground acceleration of 0.35 m/s²*, source: Ordem dos Engenheiros Técnicos / CT 115 (LNEC), read August 26, 2026, and the annex provides that only Type 1 seismic action need be considered for the archipelago. The scale's highest Type 1 zone carries several times that acceleration. The regional civil protection plan independently rates earthquake as medium probability with high severity, which is the correct combination for a low-frequency, high-consequence hazard rather than a contradiction of the zoning.

At sea, IPMA issues warnings across four separate Madeira areas, north coast, mountain, south coast and Porto Santo, including a coastal-event warning type alongside rain, wind, thunderstorm, temperature and fog. Coastal flooding is a designated risk in its own right: 34 areas*, source: Jornal Oficial da Região Autónoma da Madeira, 2022-2027, read August 26, 2026 of the Region's flood-risk areas are coastal rather than fluvial, taking in the Lido and Ponta Gorda in Funchal, Câmara de Lobos, Machico, Porto Santo, and the seafronts at Jardim do Mar and Paúl do Mar.

Coastal erosion is rated medium probability at residual severity, and volcanic activity low probability at residual severity. Neither is a live planning concern in the official documents, and neither is treated as one here.

The one thing this page cannot substitute for is proximity to emergency care, which is a different question and is set out in how the regional health service is distributed across the island.