A deadly lightening struck the IT Department of Herathera island resort and a fishing vessel in the dock yesterday morning. Network and main server of the hotel was severely damaged and the fishing vessel was taken to Maradhoo Slipway for repairing.

“Network is totally uprooted, PABX system and main server is down since yesterday” reported a Herathera staff. Further he said “phone lines, mobile services and internet access is also down”. According to him they are unable to pursue their normal routine works since the incident occurred yesterday morning.

Hulhudhoo Today has learnt that the vessel was a fishing vessel from Huvadhoo Atoll who had come to sell fish to Herathera.

Lightening has become a threat to Herathera these days. A day before communication and network systems were destroyed by lightening, power house became the victim of it around 3:00am on Monday morning.

According Ibrahim Rasheed, GM of resort, it was unclear what had caused the blackout but believed that lightning strikes over night might have caused some damage to the power generator. He added that they are not able to find any damage or problems with the generator. Read

On the other hand there are rumors that the cause of the blackout on Monday morning was due to running out of fuel in the resort.

The scale of the damage caused by lightening and time for recovery is still uncertain however staffs and management of the hotel is working hard to ease the tensions that might surface up.

Two huge burgesses with heavy load pumps and excavators are stopped from extracting sands from Meedhoo lagoon by a group of Meedhoo people yesterday. Extractions of sand are believed to be used for making the beach of Shangri-La Maldives at Villingili.

Shangri-La needs huge metric tons of sand for making its beach. Shangri-La has not contracted out the project to any of the local extractors to supply sand, but there are reports that few of the locals are selling sand to the resort. During early March a group of people had called on the province office to bring a halt on illegal extracting and selling of sand from Hithadhoo lagoon.

However Hulhudhoo office had offered to make a deal with Shangri-La recently. According to that, Shangri-La pumps out as much sand as they want from a specified area which Hulhudhoo people could develop as their port. Further it said that they should sheet-pile the harbor and dug a channel.

Last week a fleet of two huge burgesses with pumps and excavators sailed across the face of Hulhudhoo towards “Kedevaahera” where predominantly Meedhoo people extract sands for civilian and small scale business purposes. News then spread across Addu that they are undertaking sand examinations, however a group of Meedhoo people sailed to them and denied their undertakings.

White sand has become scarce in the region and extracting and transporting them from other atolls in the country would cost millions of dollars. Gdh. Fares-Maathoda is ready to supply as much sand as required by Shangri-La, however the cost of transporting and other logistics makes the project volatile. Unless the issue of getting required amount of sand is solved the dream of opening the seven star resort at Villigili will remain a shattered dream.