Madeira floods: Briton reported missing in floods that kill dozens

By Andrew Hough, Colin Freeman and Nick Meo Published: 1:53PM GMT twenty-one February 2010

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A Foreign Office orator said: "We are wakeful of reports that one British inhabitant is blank and we are urgently investigating."

A "small number" of Britons were being treated with colour in sanatorium after flooding and mudslides strike the island of Madeira, the matter said.

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People have been suggested to stay indoors on the Atlantic island, that has seen torrents of murky H2O march by the streets of collateral Funchal.

Emergency teams were sent to the island from the Portuguese mainland to support with the rescue operation.

More than 100 people have been harmed in the misfortune storms in roughly dual decades, with the series of passed and harmed expected to climb even further, officials said. Hundreds of people have been left homeless.

The Portuguese supervision is scheming to find European Union puncture benefit from Jos Manuel Barroso, the EU commissioner, who is Portuguese.

"We are study the probability of dogmatic a state of puncture and afterwards looking assistance from the European Union," pronounced Rui Pereira, the Interior Minister.

Francisco Ramos, the informal supervision amicable affairs secretary, added: "We have 38 passed but the figure is not utterly definitive.

"We are going to go on to poke for bodies, we are watchful for the teams that are due to arrive... in sequence to go on operative one the ground."

Rescue efforts have been hampered by clever winds, high seas and shut off roads, whilst phone and physical phenomenon lines are believed to have postulated serious damage.

The storms are believed to be the deadliest in Madeira given Oct 1993, when eight people died.

The island, that lies around 600 miles south-west of Portugal, is a renouned finish for British holidaymakers and is thought to have been bustling this week with half-term visitors.

Eyewitnesses described a stage of devastation, with roads "beginning to resemble rivers".

Margaret Beckett, the former unfamiliar cabinet member who is staying on the island, described the continue as "really wild".

"One of the staff here pronounced that in 46 years operative in the same place he had never seen seas similar to it or winds similar to it, so it patently has been utterly exceptional," she told the BBC.

Cathy Sayers, a British holidaymaker, pronounced Funchal was similar to a spook locale and that the infrastructure had been wrecked.

"The drains only cannot cope with the H2O that"s entrance down from the plateau they are only exuberant with sludge," she said.

"I think everybody is intensely repelled that this has happened at this time of year.

"Were impressed by calls from people asking for assistance after the torrential rains," combined one avocation military officer at the polite insurance service."

Early on Sunday, the Portuguese polite insurance group voiced it was promulgation puncture teams to the island.

The Portuguese naval frigate Corte-Real was finished with from Lisbon with helicopters, a healing group and service supplies.

Also en track were dual helicopters and dual C-130 Hercules ride aircraft.

A rescue group of 56 gendarmes and 36 firefighters set off from Lisbon.

The healing group will additionally be upheld by scuba divers and rescue experts.

Telecommunications apparatus is additionally being brought to the island to correct repairs to phones lines that have been knocked out.

The Portuguese interior apportion Rui Pereira was scheming to have an puncture revisit to the island, that was smashed by winds in additional of 70mph.

Portugal"s budding minister, Jose Socrates, voiced his "profound shock" at the scale of the devastation, that is thought to have influenced especially the capital.

Ricardo Macedo, 50, physical education instructor of the Hotel Monte Carlo in Funchal, pronounced the flooding was the misfortune any one could ever stop in the legal holiday island.

"This was worse than the last unequivocally big charge in 1993. We have been told that 3 inches of sleet fell in an hour," he said.

"I saw a new BMW floating past the finish of my transport today. And nonetheless yesterday people were entrance behind to the road residence with good pinkish faces after a balmy day out, and this dusk dual of my British guests, a integrate of teachers who are here for a half-term break, wandered in to the centre of Funchal to see for somewhere to eat.

"There are thousands of British holidaymakers here at the moment, we are a prime with the British. The air wave reports have not pronounced that any foreigners have died or been injured, but a little contingency have been held up in it."

He added: "Some of the traveller hotels have been held up in the flooding. One was half underwater with tourists unresolved out the windows.

"The volume of H2O was utterly amazing. One depth where customarily you see down and there is a drip of H2O thirty feet next you was flooding over. Two people were swept off a footbridge.

"Funchal is in a healthy amphitheater and the H2O flooded down in to it. The military force have been shining though, and so have urban area workers. They have saved a lot of people, I think."

A orator for transport watchdog Abta pronounced the series of British holidaymakers on Madeira was not "a large amount".

"They are being suggested to stay in their hotels," he said.

"Representatives from debate operators are in the routine of perplexing to revisit them."

He pronounced the supervision was creation proxy shelters accessible for hundreds of people who had been left homeless.

The island, that lies 300 miles from the Moroccan coast, markets itself as a year-round resort, and is well known for the Madeira wine, flowers, and fantastic fireworks show, believed to be the largest in the world.

The large gulf at Funchal is additionally a vital stopover for cruisers en track from Europe to the Caribbean.

In Funchal, an aged lady died when the roof tiles of her residence caved in whilst dual others were dejected by a crane, according to internal media reports.

"It had been raining given emergence and the road residence was evacuated as it is nearby a stream in the city centre," pronounced Aymeric Payan, a French road residence worker in Funchal.