Óscar Depression was a good test of the investment in the riversides

Tobi Hughes·
Madeira News

But was it?

Albuquerque visited the investment of 20 million euros in the requalification of the stretch of river in Ribeira Grande, in Santo António.

The President of the Regional Government reinforces that the recent episode of extreme precipitation registered in the Region and in particular in the mountains of Funchal proved to be a good test of the investments made in the streams.

My opinion.

Under the circumstances, the defences of the rivers did a good job of containing the rain water from the Óscar depression, but we have to know that we had weeks if not months of dry weather before, so most of this water could soak into the ground.

February 20th 2010 was much different, we had weeks of wet weather before, and the ground was totally saturated, so the rain water had no where else to go, if this had been the case for the Oscar depression, would the rivers have done there job?

 

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Tobi Hughes

4 Responses

  1. I take your point but sometimes when we get very intense heavy rain after a long dry spell the ground is baked so hard that a good deal of the rain does run straight off. Dunno if that applies in Madeira

  2. You could be in England where infrastructure has been ignored for 30 years

  3. Yes, very dry weeks or months leading up to incidents of heavy rain will create significantly more runoff.

  4. I lived in a very pretty little hamlet with a stream 20ft away from the front door. Aptly called Brookside Cottages, on occasions, Brook Inside Cottages. We flooded about six times. Our two fears were, a dry sun baked earth, when the water would not soak into the ground and frost, followed by snow, then heavy rain, which happened twice. Again the water would not soak into the ground but run off straight into the stream. Madeira has the same scenario, except for the frost and snow. A long period of sun bakes the earth and because of the mountains and hills, the water doesn’t puddle but runs very quickly down to the sea. The soil needs to be able to soak up the water. Bearing in mind the number of casualties and deaths, and the physical damage, I think the Authorities want congratulating.

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