Bad weather dampens holiday spirit in Canaries
For the past week the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria have been experiencing their worst weather in decades with reports of violent flash floods and severe thunderstorms bringing chaos to resort areas.
In Playa De Las Americas on Tenerife, torrential rain flooded hotel rooms and apartments. Never built to withstand such an onslaught, the rain poured into bedrooms and living areas, leaving hundreds of holidaymakers stranded.
The storms also cut power to shops and restaurants in the area as well as to hotels, apartment blocks and villas.
Heavy cloudbursts over hills around the resort brought silt and mud tumbling down onto roadways, leaving motorists stranded.
Many roads near the main resort area were blocked and traffic was at a standstill for two days.
Most buses and other public transport were also halted by the extraordinary weather.
As one Irish holidaymaker put it: “I’ve never in my life seen such rain, not even in Ireland. We went for six days. We had two half days of sun at the start of the week and one good day just before we came home. The rest of the time was overcast and dull.”
It started raining on Wednesday and it didn’t stop until Friday night.”
Last weekend some sunseekers arrived to discover their apartments had no electricity because lightning had blown a local transformer.
One family woke up in the middle of the night to find their apartment complex under three feet of water and they were forced to gather their belongings and abandon it.
The following day, on the main street of Playa de las Americas, sunseekers wearing shorts could be seen trundling through knee-high floods to get to one of the few supermarkets left open in the resort.
For days, hotel restaurants and local cafes could not operate because they had no power but luckily for thirsty Irish holiday makers, the bars stayed open by operating with oil lamps.
The worst conditions were confined to the Las Americas area.
