Madeiran Disaster- we were there

Audlem resident, Robert Yarwood, has sent a first-hand report of being involved in the disaster that struck the island of Madeira last month.

Being members of the Holiday Property Bond, we usually go away before the start of the motorsport season, so we booked a week in Madeira with our new found relatives (that's a whole other story) to what we thought would be a sun-filled warm break. How wrong we were.

Jess and I and my new relatives arrived to blustery winds but sunshine, got the car and drove to our 7-day destination right at the Cabo Girao 680 metre cliff, point of interest. We had been one time before since our new life in Audlem began 5 years ago, we really enjoyed the facility and the island with it's friendly locals.

GalesTuesday brought a change in the weather, gale force winds and heavy rain and as the week went on things got worse. We managed to get out every day but it was obvious conditions were getting severe.

The TV was first out followed by electrical failures, the wind never let up for a week and the rain went from bad to worse.

Saturday saw the devastation start to happen with flood barricades being overflowed sweeping away all in their path. two main road bridges fell away, countless mudslides, landslips, tree falls, it was utter devastation.

We saw two crushed cars and many many roads closed to traffic due to the surface being washed away.

Difficult to recoverWhilst we were only on holiday, the Island of Madeira will find it difficult to recover and have a monumental cleaning and rebuilding operation to carry out, when we left the fatalities were up around 50, the missing were in the hundreds, as were the injured in local hospitals.

We got word that the Portugese authoritioes had sent two ships from the mainland with heavy equipment together with planes full of doctors and nurses to help with the very stretched island resources.

It will be a while before things can possibly get back to normal for this holiday destination both in terms of residents and visitors alike and for such a tourist dependent economy this has been a week of weeks that they don't want to experience again in a hurry.

Although the airport had been closed on several occasions during our stay, we did get out at the correct time on the correct day back to our quiet Audlem cottage and our Boxer dog

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