
Friday, 14th November 2008 - 13:27CET
Video: Heavy downpour floods central areas of Malta
Video: Karl Galea.
(Updated: Video added)
A sudden, heavy downpour in the central part of Malta has flooded ground floor homes and caused cars to stall in Birkirkara and Valley Road, Msida. At the top part of Valley Road a number of parked cars were carried away by the flood waters.
Eyewitnesses have also reported flooding in Attard.
Long traffic jams have formed in the area.
The weather is expected to remain unstable into the weekend.







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Comments
Dom Mintoff stepped down from PM back in 1984, 24 years ago. Since then five other legislatures have been elected. Are you alleging that all the buildings in the valleys present as at today, have all been built/permits granted solely under Mintoff's administration? Or is it wiser to say that subsequent Governments have not sought to fix such a problem as created?
A better explanation to your article is hence much appreciated, especially after lifting your anti-Mintoff-hatred-eye-patch from your face.
To discredit someone in entirety, a counter reaction, and hence eradication of this person's deeeds should have been taken up, and supposedly, 20 years would have been enough. Nonetheless as has happened in almost all of Mintoff's deeds, following Governements have sought to build on his foundations rather than pulling these down, and I am not only refering infrastructurally.
PS - Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't the foundations of the proposed vegetable market at the foot of Saqqajja hill in the 1960's built on a valley? ... sure it was and it slipped down all the way through it too!!
Thanks to Mintoff's idea to destroy valleys and build them up so that his "friends" can have nice plots...especially Iklin followed by Birkirkara and Msida, we have been having these flood problems ever since.
This flooding does not happen in Gozo....why you may ask...well the valleys are still valleys...need I say more!
With regards to the owners of the vehicles being so nicely swept away....why are you concerned about this? They are the irresponsible one and no one else....if they park there and obviously they know what happens there, they should be on the alert on rainy days and move their cars away with the first signs of flooding, instead of leaving them there, and when the water starts moving the cars, they start taking pictures and photos!!!
And why should we complain? At least once every so often we get our own local river!!!!:-) Fjording it with a Land Rover is the ultimate thrill...hehehe!
Thanks To the P.N in POWER.
@Stephen Micallef sInce you can provide and easy solution gratis to the Govt as you said why dont you share your Wisdom to the authorities, that would be so sane for you, it means More EWROS in your Pocket LOL.
Fast forward to 2008. I am still driving the same vehicle but am now penalised. Will I be out on the roads doing my bit to help others during another flash flood? CERTAINLY NOT!
PN governments unblocked the Birkirkara Valley , and raised the side walls of the Marsa canal and clealeared up the Salini area.
No major projects are needed , all we have to do is harvest rain water in our buildings and use it.
BTW from what I saw on the MIA weather site 23mm of rain poured on the area of B'Kara in less than an hour (12.30 to 13.30) other areas had only 7mm of rain.
Get a new keyboard, I had a hard trying to understand your message. Some areas in Malta get flooded so badly that the least a government in power for 20 years can do is fix them. Aldo Moro Street was like the Amazon river and Qormi near Pavi was becoming swampland!
thanks for the energy saving bulbs but on this island the bulbs are not going to make the differance to our wasted resources...... something should be done on a larger scale by the government on what we are having free (rain) and we could use much more better instead of waisting it......
If my memory serves me right it was the Mintoff administration that started the rehabilitation of valleys, the building of water catchments and the rehabilitation of Wied il-Qleja with the assistance of Italian experts. It was the PN in government who stopped this project and left everything to go back to its dilapidated state. PN indeed!!!!!
Any sane and reasonable person (unless he is a government apologist) would rightfully expect that a party in government for over 20 years would have solved this issue by now. So far we've had nothing but a lot of blah blah blah from various ministers, many ideas of projects to solve the problem, and many promises of EU funds to finance a solution. As a layman living in the area most affected by floods, I can provide and easy solution gratis: go to the root cause and solve the problem at source by building water catchment reservoirs below Naxxar, on Mosta Road leading to Naxxar Road, and at Iklin. Whatever water remains can be channelled by underground tunnels (not pipes!) to additional reservoirs in Balzan. Birkirkara and Msida. I can guarantee you that not a drop will remain on the roads o ends up in Msida creek.
A few things that have to be considered is that that water is highly contaminated. So the use of that water has to be properly controlled.
A highly sophisticated water treatment plant has to be built to be able to process that water for human consumption ( as suggested by some people) and still the same water must be treated to a satisfacory standard to be used for irrigation.
In my opinion that road should have never be constructed at the bottom of a valley like the one in MSida Valley. What do you expect.!
Malta's topsoil washes away to the sea. It won't take long until this is a barren rock. Why can't the farmers dig wells and catch this water?
Talking about Shame, who is going to feel ashamed ? The P.N In Goverment, or the late ,mlp ???.
The Gov't is Tackling this Problem now and as You may well know, its not an easy task !!
mlp never took this matter in a serious way they had all the time in the world. But now that The P.N is there,( And there to STAY ! ) Everything is the P.N's Fault !!!
STOP THE RAIN Dr GONZI, OR WE WILL MAKE ANOTHER MANESTIFATION !!!
A team of researchers in Germany are studying how humans can apply ant-thinking to clean up clogged roads and make traffic flow faster The study headed by an intelligent expert hopes to learn how ants figure out their way out in moving around in crowded colonies.
The researchers reported that they found that just before the shortest route got congested outgoing ants diverted incoming ants to another route and traffic.They also studied them on complex routes and longer ones.No problems - traffic flows !!
With a little help from our ants. :)
We pride ourselves to be part of europe and the european union but when one drives in Valley Road in Msida after a simple rainfall this would look like a third world country. This is surely a life threathening danger to anyone passing through that road.
This is surely one of the issues the goverment failed miserably throughout so many years.
What a shame!
Its a pitty that all that water is wasted.
Rather then harping about energy saver bulbs I prefer to hear what is going on about the case in point as it would have a bigger impact on W&E charges as well improve the social dimension