Gozo Flash-Floods: Overnight Deluge Turns Victoria Streets to Rivers, Disrupts Feasts and Unites Islanders

Watch: Flooding in several localities as heavy rain hits Gozo
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Victoria’s stone-paved It-Tokk woke up looking more like Venice this morning after an overnight cloudburst dumped a month’s worth of rain onto Gozo in less than six hours. Videos shot by residents show water gushing down Republic Street, swirling round the bronze statue of Nieguż, and turning the Citadel ditch into a temporary lake. By 7 a.m. the Civil Protection Department had responded to 42 calls—everything from trapped cars in Xlendi valley to a flooded farmhouse in Għarb—marking the worst flash-flood event on the sister island since the 2014 “November storm” that made international headlines.

Gozitans are used to a bit of drama from the sky; after all, the mythic Calypso supposedly kept Odysseus hostage in a cave overlooking Ramla Bay precisely because the weather could flip in minutes. But what shocked locals was the speed: the downburst hit at 2.15 a.m., radar shows a deep-red cell parked over the island for 210 minutes, dumping 68 mm of rain—almost triple the October average. “It felt biblical,” says Frankie Portelli, whose family bakery on St Francis Square has been churning out ftira since 1897. “One minute you hear distant thunder, the next you’re ankle-deep in dough water.”

Roads turned to rivers
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The worst-hit areas formed a crescent from Rabat to Xewkija. In Nadur, the traditional alley of Triq il-Wied became a brown torrent that lifted parked scooters and deposited them in front of the parish church—an image already doing the rounds as a meme titled “Our Lady of the Yamahas”. Victoria’s new €3-million pedestrian underpass—hailed only last month as “flood-proof”—ended up resembling a swimming pool, prompting caustic remarks that Gozo finally has an indoor pool worthy of the EU funds that paid for it. Traffic ground to a halt; the Gozo Channel ferry operated on a one-hour delay as vehicles inched through water up to their sills to reach Mġarr harbour.

Cultural calendar shaken
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Today was meant to be the feast of St Ursula in Xagħra, one of the last village fetes of the season. Instead, brass-band marches were cancelled, street decorations taken down in haste, and the statue of the saint wrapped in tarpaulin—an eerie sight for a village that normally reverberates to the sound of petards and polyphonic chant. “We’ve baked 2,000 qagħaq tal-ħmira (traditional festa bagels) that we’ll now donate to the evacuated elderly,” regrets Marica Camilleri, president of the local band club. “Feast food never goes to waste, but we’d rather have danced.”

Community spirit shines
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By dawn, the “Gozo Helping Hands” Facebook group had already mobilised 300 volunteers armed with brooms, buckets and, inevitably, pastizzi. Students from the Gozo College skipped first period to sweep mud out of widows’ homes; a farmer from Żebbuġ ferried stranded tourists across an impromptu lake in the back of his tractor, charging nothing but a smile. Even Archbishop Ġużeppi Cassar toured the worst-hit houses, cassock rolled up, distributing blessed candles and reassurance.

Government reacts
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Infrastructure Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi flew in by helicopter at midday, promising an “immediate review” of drainage systems and €5 million in emergency repairs. But critics point out that a 2018 drainage masterplan for Gozo remains 70% unfunded. “We can’t keep treating climate change like a foreign problem,” says Arnold Cassola, announcing he will table a parliamentary question on unspent EU cohesion funds earmarked for flood mitigation.

What next?
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Met Office forecasters warn another trough could sweep across the central Mediterranean on Friday. Meanwhile, Gozitans are doing what they do best—sharing stories over mugs of kafe’ parrinu, sweeping water out of 300-year-old doorways, and turning disaster into camaraderie. As octogenarian Ċensa ta’ Ġorġ puts it from her balcony overlooking St George’s Basilica, “We’ve survived Knights, French, British and cheap 1980s concrete. A bit of rain won’t drown Gozo; it just reminds us we’re an island that floats on community.”