No pictures this update
It's early afternoon here, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and it's raining. Not hard. Not steady. That's here on the SE side of the island.
No pictures because we haven't left the house, and we haven't had TV all morning. At some point in the night the cable TV connections to the east of Funchal were cut, so that this half of the island is without television.
What we know at the moment comes from the radio and from phone calls with my colleagues in the consulate, who decided to go into town to check for messages on the phones.
General information: 42 dead, 4 missing, 400 homeless.
Eyewitness information:
1) Ana and Trudy could not get all the way downtown by car. Trudy's son dropped them off and they had to walk in the last 8 blocks or so. Mud everywhere. The seafront avenue still a sea of mud. They were having some difficulty leaving the downtown area on foot, as some streets are closed, even to pedestrian traffic, especially in the areas close to the stream beds, where the roads are in danger of collapsing.
2) José Carlos went down to his office by bus. Well, the buses are letting people off at the top of hill by the Casino. It's a 20-minute walk into town. Clean-up has started downtown; the mayor wants it done within a week. José Carlos says it is impossible to walk down some of the streets, due to all the rocks.
3) One shopping center (Anadia) was completely destroyed by water that poured through it from one street to the other, and the two underground parking levels were flooded. We understood the radio to say this morning that one level had been pumped out, but we think perhaps the -2 level still had water. No victims found so far, according to the report.
4) Another new, large shopping center near the other stream (Dulce Vita) is also closed. I think there are three underground levels of parking, all filled with water, and the lowest level of the shops (food court and supermarket) had 2 meters of water in it. One of our church members was at work there when the waters came in, but she was on the third level up. Her husband had taken her to work and parked the car, which is something he doesn't usually do. When the rains got heavier and some water started coming in, he took the car out with minutes to spare.
We have a Bible study later tonight, and I'm thinking of trying to see how close I can get to the office then.
No pictures because we haven't left the house, and we haven't had TV all morning. At some point in the night the cable TV connections to the east of Funchal were cut, so that this half of the island is without television.
What we know at the moment comes from the radio and from phone calls with my colleagues in the consulate, who decided to go into town to check for messages on the phones.
General information: 42 dead, 4 missing, 400 homeless.
Eyewitness information:
1) Ana and Trudy could not get all the way downtown by car. Trudy's son dropped them off and they had to walk in the last 8 blocks or so. Mud everywhere. The seafront avenue still a sea of mud. They were having some difficulty leaving the downtown area on foot, as some streets are closed, even to pedestrian traffic, especially in the areas close to the stream beds, where the roads are in danger of collapsing.
2) José Carlos went down to his office by bus. Well, the buses are letting people off at the top of hill by the Casino. It's a 20-minute walk into town. Clean-up has started downtown; the mayor wants it done within a week. José Carlos says it is impossible to walk down some of the streets, due to all the rocks.
3) One shopping center (Anadia) was completely destroyed by water that poured through it from one street to the other, and the two underground parking levels were flooded. We understood the radio to say this morning that one level had been pumped out, but we think perhaps the -2 level still had water. No victims found so far, according to the report.
4) Another new, large shopping center near the other stream (Dulce Vita) is also closed. I think there are three underground levels of parking, all filled with water, and the lowest level of the shops (food court and supermarket) had 2 meters of water in it. One of our church members was at work there when the waters came in, but she was on the third level up. Her husband had taken her to work and parked the car, which is something he doesn't usually do. When the rains got heavier and some water started coming in, he took the car out with minutes to spare.
We have a Bible study later tonight, and I'm thinking of trying to see how close I can get to the office then.
posted by EP | 1:40 PM | Permalink
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