Coastline near Valencia on red alert, two weeks after deadly floods

Photo: José Jordan Agence France-Presse A firefighter walks on an empty street during the rain in Paiporta, south of Valencia, eastern Spain, on November 13, 2024, following deadly floods.

José Jordan – Agence France-Presse in Valencia

Published at 2:20 p.m.

• Europe

“The danger is extreme”: two weeks after the tragic floods that hit southeastern Spain, the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) placed the coast near Valencia on red alert on Wednesday night due to torrential rain.

“Avoid travel. Rivers may overflow and flooding may occur,” warned the AEMET Agency on X. The red alert, the maximum possible alert level, will be active from 9 p.m. (4 p.m. in Quebec) until Thursday at 12 p.m. (7 a.m. in Quebec).

Up to 180 millimeters of rain could fall in 12 hours on the Valencia coast, according to AEMET forecasts.

Traffic restrictions have been issued in areas already affected by the October 29 floods that killed at least 223 people.

Rail traffic between Barcelona and Valencia has also been suspended, the national operator announced. Renfe.

The meteorological agency had also issued a red alert on Wednesday in the provinces of Malaga (Andalusia, south) and Tarragona (Catalonia, northeast), due to this new “cold drop”, an isolated high-altitude depression quite common in autumn on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

“Today, Malaga is paralyzed,” said the president of the Andalusia region, Juan Manuel Moreno, during a trip to Seville. “Prevention is better than cure, we saw it in Valencia,” insisted the president of the region.

In Malaga, where several axes were flooded, the metro was closed, the train line to Madrid was suspended and flights were diverted. The municipality has evacuated nearly 3,000 people “preventively.”

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“Everything is going well since we were warned last night,” explained Ida Maria Ledesma Martin, a resident of Campanillas, near Malaga, to AFP: “This morning, around 10am, police officers went through the streets to warn everyone, the deployment is very good and I don't think it's exaggerated at all.”

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Makeshift barricades

In the municipality of Paiporta, near Valencia, considered as the epicenter of the disaster two weeks ago, residents had set up makeshift barricades with bags of earth in front of the doors of their houses on Wednesday morning, fearing in particular that the sewers still clogged with mud would overflow.

These new rains have affected the search operations for the 17 people still missing, concentrated mainly around the watercourses and on the coast, at the mouths of the rivers.

“The searches at sea have been compromised because of the maritime storm,” Rosa Tourís, spokesperson for Cecopi, the Valencia emergency committee, explained to the press. “After this weather event, the tides will be reassessed to determine the search areas,” she added.

As a precaution, several municipalities in the region had asked the thousands of volunteers who come every day to help residents clear the streets not to go to the disaster areas on Wednesday.

“Exceptional intensity”

In Andalusia and Catalonia, where the red-alert provinces of Malaga and Tarragona are located, authorities had anticipated the possible consequences of heavy rain by sending alert messages to mobile phones, which sound a loud beep when received.

The authorities in Valencia had been heavily criticised for sending the warning message late on 29 October.

Outrage at the authorities, who were accused of misjudging the risks and delaying the deployment of relief supplies, led to mass protests on Saturday, the largest of which brought together 130,000 people in the city of Valencia.

The red alert issued by AEMET, corresponding to weather phenomena of “exceptional intensity” presenting “a very high level of risk for the population”, also led the authorities to suspend classes on Wednesday in part of Catalonia and in Andalusian cities such as Granada and Malaga.

In this city, the bad weather also led to the postponement until Friday of a match between Spain and Poland in the Billie Jean King Cup women's tennis tournament, which was to be played on Wednesday afternoon.