Insurance companies were yesterday counting the cost of Monday’s thunderstorms as bright blue skies and sunny weather revealed the extent of the damage.

The whole stretch of Valley Road from Birkirkara to Msida was akin to a warzone as government workers used mechanical shovels to remove rubble, debris and cars.

They removed around 125 tonnes of debris from the Msida end of Valley Road alone.

It was too early to quantify the amount of claims arising from the rain, according to Julian Mamo, a director at insurance firm Gasan Mamo.

“But the storms caused a considerable amount of damage.”

It is unclear whether this storm was worse than that of September 15, 2003, when insurance companies faced record claims of nearly €14 million. Patrick Muscat, chief claims officer at Middlesea Insurance, said his company had received about 110 claims related to property and businesses just yesterday. The figure was expected to increase over the next few days.

And as the stench of drainage from overflowing sewers filled the air, shopkeepers in Valley Road were left totting up losses as they struggled to put on a veneer of normality while they cleaned the mess.

Cleaning up the wreckage

Birkirkara and Msida were the worst hit, especially during the second storm.

An ironmonger was throwing away boxes of invoices and papers that the floods had turned into pulp.

Further up, the owners of a small restaurant were washing dirty chairs in the street.

An upholsterer had to throw away rolls of cloth as he tried to dry a client’s car that was caught in the garage when the rains wreaked havoc.

At one point, a Father Christmas decoration floated down a stream of dirty running water. It had come from one of the old houses used as a store by a family that had moved out.

Wet external walls showed that in some parts of Msida the level of storm water had reached almost four courses high.

A car stereo, owner unknown, jutted out of a rubble mound. Some metres away a dead rat was strewn across an alleyway and a badly-mangled car was still lodged between the trees on the centre-strip. The Għajn tal-Ħasselin was full of dirty water.

Up the road, in Birkirkara, the road surface was badly damaged and rubble walls had subsided.

Resources Minister George Pullicino, who visited workers involved in the clean-up with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, said it was ironic the storms happened in the same week that works on a massive flood relief tunnel were scheduled to start.

The three-storey tunnel will begin at Attard and eventually open up to the sea at Ta’ Xbiex, collecting rainwater from the Balzan-Birkirkara catchment area.

The project, expected to cost €32 million, is part of a wider network of flood relief tunnels that will cost €56 million.

“The flood relief project will help collect water before it starts flowing down to the more problematic areas in Birkirkara and Msida,” Mr Pullicino said, as he observed the damage around him.

In Qormi, 25 tonnes of debris were removed and similar clean-up operations were done in Gozo. In Xlendi Bay alone, five truckloads of bamboo and two trucks full of other waste were removed.

The Transport Ministry said it was surveying the damage done to the road network.

It also published a list of roads where emergency works will start shortly by eight contractors.

See the list of roads to be repaired on timesofmalta.com.