Tuesday, February 23, 2010
For those who may know my sister Suey and my bro-in-law Peter. They are currently in Madeira en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira at their get-away and had the following news to report. They sound like they were very fortunate.
Hi Terry and Lori,
We are now in our apartment - the city of Funchal sufferered major damage - we were only able to stand in a park above the city and watch what was going on - lots of earth moving equipment - water flowing. An underground parking lot that we were in last year a couple of times, entrance was covered with rocks, mud and water - we heard this morning that when the storm hit it was Saturday morning(market day) and lots of women and children were downtown shopping - when the weather got bad they headed for the parking lot to head home - the parking lot filled with water and mud and we are not sure how many are still missing, but they are searching it today. The parking lot is three stories underground and suppossedly all floors were filled with water and they were draining it. A woman from England was changing hotels, because of the storm and she and her husband were in a taxi that was swept away in the flash floods - she died - not sure what happened to him. There are over 100 people in the hospitals - 42 dead and we are not sure how many are missing. The chamber maid at our hotel last night lost 7 family members and she was still at work on Sunday - so sad. Our apartments are on a hill above the city, so we did not suffer the damage that the city did - the city is directly below a mountain and when the storm hit(one months rain in 6 hours, with 60 mile an hour winds) the water just came cascading down on the city with flash floods. Funchal is such a beautiful city - we spend alot of time in the city at outdoor cafes either having a Coral (local beer) or a Chinasa (milky coffee) just watching the people go about their lives in such a wonderful place. We hope that we will be able to do that in the next three weeks. An army helicopter just went by very slowly - I believe they may be looking for bodies along the shore - people that may have been swept to sea. Well that is the news from Madeira. Can you give Mom a copy of the letter - Thanks!
Take care, Susan and Peter