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NEWS > EVERYONE ELSE > FLOODING IN PORTUGAL KILLS 38, MOSTLY PORTUGUESE
FLOODING IN PORTUGAL KILLS 38, MOSTLY PORTUGUESE
February 22 2010
Funchal, Medeira Islands – The story of the tower of Babel is one of the most compelling and outlandish tales in the Bible. Essentially, the story depicts a city and a people, all the peoples of the world, coming together to build a giant tower that could
reach the Heavens. God, seeing this tower as a dedication to worship the kingdom of man rather than His own, confused the languages of the people and scattered them across the planet, thereby creating the multitude of cultures that exist today.
Science and history of course tell us differently. Over the course of thousands of years human beings spread across the planet, developing their own cultures, ethnicities, and languages according to their environment. Of course as our cultures have become increasingly more intertwined, and as our technological advances allow us to build towers high into the sky, perhaps the tale of Babel was not a historical lesson, but rather a premonition. Regardless of what God-like vengeance might one day be visited upon us, the reality is that our languages have become less and less voluminous with only a few taking up most day-to-day interactions. Chief amongst those is of course English, followed by Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Other languages of course have play, but most have been relegated to second banana. One of those languages is Portuguese which at one time could have been the Spanish of the modern day, but instead has become largely obscured by history which is why the deadly floods in Portugal have elicited so little attention by the world at large.
“More than 120 other people were injured and an unknown number were missing, possibly swept away or smothered. The death could still rise. Of 248 people who were forced to flee their homes for temporary shelters, 85 have been allowed to return home,” said Social services spokesman Francisco Jardim Ramo. “Not all the bodies have been identified but it is believed at this point that majority of the victims are Portuguese citizens.”
The flooding took place on the island of Maderia, an the capital of the autonomous archipelago just off the Portuguese coast. 
“We heard a very loud noise, like rolling thunder, the ground shook and then we realized it was water coming down. There were cars overturned, bridges were torn down, fire engines were tossed around like children’s toys. It was really horrific,” said Simon Burbage, a British citizen who was visiting the island. “I can tell you that this isn’t the type of thing I go in for. I worked quite hard all last year and I wanted to take a relaxing trip. I did not sign up for flash floods or having to wade through knee high water and corpses of dozens of dead Portuguese. Next year, I will be visiting Spain I can tell you that much.”
Equally visitors from other countries such as Germany and Austria were inconvenienced by the flooding which has put a damper on the normally un-flooded region.
“Realistically Portugal had its shot and it didn’t work out all that well. It’s been okay
and everything, but in the grand scheme of things no one is going to think back to the grand old days of Portugal. No one is going to make movies about the great Portuguese empire. That’s true of many other countries, but they also didn’t try. A guy whose happy repairing furnaces is much more respectable than say Kirk Cameron or Sarah Palin,” said Scrape TV International analyst Gustav Hander. “That’s why no one is really interested in the lives or deaths of the Portuguese any more than they are anyone else. They had it, they blew it, and now they have to learn to live with it all by themselves.”
Reportedly very few people in Portugal care one way or the other.
Emil Uliya, International Correspondent
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