Drivers rescued from cars trapped in floodwaters

A number of drivers had to be rescued from cars trapped in floodwaters in a number of localities in the first big storm of the season yesterday.

The rain fell heavily in various places, but according to the meteorological office, no records were broken.

In parliament in the evening, Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg thanked the forces of law and order, saying their work had saved lives (see story on page 6).

The rain started pelting down at about 9 a.m. and continued until the early afternoon, leading the Civil Protection Department to warn the public to stay inside if possible.

The meteorological office said the bad weather was expected to continue for the rest of the week, easing slightly today and returning with strong and possibly gale force winds and rain on Friday, with showers over the weekend.

At about 10 a.m. civil protection personnel were already on emergency alert and director Peter Cordina said that practically all of Malta and parts of Gozo were flooded.

Both police headquarters and the department were inundated with calls from people whose homes were flooded or who were stranded in the downpour.

The water gushed down Valley Road, Birkirkara and Msida like a river, leaving motorists stranded in their cars.

A number of cars were swept away and overturned, coming to a halt only after crashing into other cars.

In a statement, the department said several roads had become inaccessible and it had mobilised its resources, together with the Armed Forces of Malta and the Public Works Department, to help those who had got caught up in the floods.

Members of the Red Cross and St John's Ambulance were also on stand-by ready to intervene should the need arise.

The police said that no injuries were reported.

However, the civil protection department said that a motorist driving through Burmarrad, another area prone to flooding, was in serious danger and had to be rescued.

The department was also kept extremely busy helping motorists passing through Marsa, Msida, Birkirkara, Bahar ic-Caghaq, St Andrew's and Gudja.

RMF Limited head of department Roberto De Battista said they had received between 800 to 900 calls for help and they attended to about 550 cars throughout the day.

Mr De Battista said this was no record and whenever it rained heavily they always received hundreds of calls from people in distress.

"We monitor the weather so we were fully equipped and geared to rush to the rescue before the calls start coming in," he said.

"We had all our full complement of 17 vehicles out and we could not keep up. The heavy traffic made getting to the spot much more difficult," said Mr De Battista.

There were long tailbacks of traffic across most of the island as motorists tried to avoid flooded roads, which in areas such as Msida rose to more than waist-high.

One man came up with the idea of trying to cross through the deluge by tying crates to his feet - but his attempt failed and he had to cling to a signpost for dear life.

Several people were trapped in shops, caught unawares by the sudden rainfall and waiters in coffee shops could be heard lamenting that they would have no custom because of the rain.

Lightning also led to several power surges in households and temporarily led to the Nationalist Party's station, Radio 101, going off air for a short time during the news at noon. The news was later broadcast at 1 p.m.

The Met Office said the downpour was due to a trough of low pressure in the upper atmosphere, which while swinging south-eastwards from the Tyrrhenian Sea onto the Central Mediterranean, brought a very unstable air mass over the area of the Maltese islands.

This instability led to the development of scattered thunderstorms.

Owing to the weak wind speeds in the upper atmosphere driving the thunderstorms, the rain tended to accumulate on particular areas, rather than spreading over a wide area.

This resulted in heavy and prolonged precipitation over certain areas, mainly the central part and Gozo, the Met Office said.

So while certain areas such as Dingli experienced only 2.8 millimetres of rain, in Birkirkara 41.8 millimetres were measured. In other places rain was also accompanied by hail.

Up until noon yesterday, 73.2 millimetres of rain had fallen at the Malta International Airport, most of which fell in the two hours between 9.45 and 11.45 a.m. Another instrument at the airport, at Gudja, measured 121 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours up to noon yesterday.

The Met Office insisted that none of these figures broke any existing records.

The records were established on November 23, 1983 when 120 millimetres of rain fell in an hour and three quarters at Luqa and on November 10, 1988 when 162.5 millimetre of rain was measured in 24 hours.