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New mudslide alert in Madeira

FUNCHAL (Portugal) - RESIDENTS fled their homes for fear of new mudslides on the tourist island of Madeira on Monday as Portugal decreed three days of mourning for the 42 people killed in weekend flash floods.

Rescuers were braced to find more bodies in flooded carparks and mud-filled homes two days after killer mudslides ripped through the picturesque Atlantic island, gutting buildings and overturning cars.

A Portuguese warship carrying helicopters and loaded with medical and relief supplies arrived off southern Madeira Monday, with more gendarmes and emergency workers to fly in on a military aircraft later in the day.

Buildings were still threatening to cave in across the southern region surrounding the main city of Funchal, where the violence of the storm partly destroyed a four-lane highway.

In Ribeira Brava, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Funchal, authorities ordered 30 to 40 people to evacuate their homes for fear a nearby hillside was about to collapse, the local mayor told TSF radio.

Families were also evacuated from a high-risk zone in Ponta do Sol a bit further west while a helicopter surveyed damage to the surrounding hills, local mayor Rui Marques told the Lusa news agency.

Green groups and construction experts charge that rogue development has left Madeira vulnerable to flash floods. The island has undergone spectacular modernisation in the past 30 years but hundreds of buildings have sprung up on flood-prone land, with roads and luxury hotels preventing engorged rivers from releasing water into the soil, they say.—AFP

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