New!

New!

Further along the motorway was completely flooded, and then we knew we were going to have problems getting home, we decided to come off at the next exit, and try to get back nearer to home and just let Alfie out in the rain.

The next exit was flooded so we carried on along the motorway, every turn off, the small roads were rivers and on the other side was another flooded section of motorway, with such huge amounts of water crashing down and emergency services trying to pump the water away and traffic backed up for miles we now knew it would take hours to get back home . We came off the next exit Santa Cruz, roads were like rivers, the River itself was close to bursting point and the sound of the muddy water gushing down to the sea was terrifying.

Santa Cruz was pretty flooded, so we decided to get back on the motorway to head home, the road was closed as under the bridge was flooded so we had to rejoin the motorway heading for the airport, the roads were flooded every where and we couldn't get under the airport, so carried on to Machico, there was so much water everywhere!

We decided to stop at the petrol station and have a decide on what to do, by this time a friend had called Nelio ( My Partner) to say that another friend of ours had been washed away in his car after a huge mudslide sent him crashing down the road, thank god he was ok, but his car and many others were smashed to bits.

After we heard this news we put the radio on and this is when we first heard of the real story of what this storm was causing, the Rivers in Funchal had all burst their banks and the city was beginning to flood, then came the news of the first deaths and then more and more bad news. We spent about 2 hours at the petrol station waiting to see if the rain would ease, and the dog was let out to do his business, the rain continued to pour and we were cold and wet.

We decided to head home and just have to sit in traffic if that was the case. We got onto the motorway and everything was moving ok, the flooded area had been cleared and the emergency services had gone, it was all going good then we hit traffic, so we just sat and waited, then along came fire brigade and a tractor and a digger trying to get down the 2 lanes of traffic, they managed this and we just sat and waited.

We waited hours, then finally the traffic ahead started moving, we slowly edged forward, we got to a tunnel and this is where we went down to one lane, the other lane in the tunnel had water gushing down it, up ahead we could see that there had been a landslide which had blocked the whole 2 lanes the tractor and digger had moved this to the left hand side and the water was still gushing down and acorss the road by we could get past, all the time the news on the radio was getting worse and worse, by the time we got back home in the dry we had been out 5 and a half hours, just to let the dog out.....!

 Copyright © 2004-20011 The Madeira Times. All Rights Reserved

Holiday Let

in Ponta do Sol

Find your dream home in Madeira