The president of the Ponta Delgada Parish Council today called the consequences of the rains that devastated the locality a “tragedy”, causing floods, overflow of streams, damage to roads and homes.
“And now, we have to forget this Christmas day,” Miguel Freitas told Lusa, stressing that “it looks like the situation [time] will be stable, at least, that’s what is expected”.
For the mayor, “the situation now is one of cleaning and waiting for the machines to do their job and to minimize any chance of things going wrong”.
“Only tomorrow [Saturday] will we make the aftermath of this tragedy,” he said.
“The streets were practically impassable, only now we are doing the cleaning work, I know that there are many houses that were damaged but, fortunately, we did not have any human losses, at least so far there is no information in that sense and the damage was only materials “, he stressed.
For Miguel Freitas, the rains, which had the most critical period between 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm, “were not absorbed by the soils and the streams were unable to flow the immense water and overflowed to other roads”.
Roads, houses, cemetery and the church area were, for the mayor, the places most affected by the storm.
“The area of Primeira Lombada is isolated, it is not convenient to move, but people are safe, they are well and there is no report of any human damage”, he observed.
Miguel Freitas also points out that the machines of the Municipality of São Vicente and the Regional Directorate of Roads are already working and “now it is time to wait for tomorrow [Saturday] and then see the real losses”.