Search for survivors continues in Spain after 'floods of the century'

Search operations for survivors continue Thursday in the south-east of Spain is in shock after the worst floods in more than fifty years in the country, which left at least 95 dead and many missing.

More than 1,200 soldiers are deployed on the ground, mainly in the Valencia region, alongside firefighters, police officers and rescue workers who are trying to locate possible survivors and s 'are trying to clear the disaster areas.

The latest figures released by the authorities indicate 95 deaths, 92 of them in the community of Valencia alone, the hardest hit. Two other deaths were recorded in the neighbouring region of Castile-La Mancha and a third in Andalusia.

This figure, the highest since floods that killed 300 people in October 1973, “will increase”, because there are still “many missing people”, warned the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, on Wednesday evening.

“Today, the priority is the search for the missing”, insisted the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles. “We know that there are places (…) where there may be people in garages, in basements, people who have gone to get their vehicles,” she said.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has declared three days of national mourning, arrived in Valencia in the morning, where he visited the Rescue Coordination Centre (Cecopi), according to images broadcast by public television TVE.

The trip comes as more heavy rain could fall in the north of the region, according to the Spanish meteorological agency (Aemet), which has issued a “red alert” for the province of Castellon, about 100 kilometres north of Valencia.

– Mud and debris –

According to the authorities, thousands of people are still without electricity in the region. Many roads remain closed, while countless car wrecks litter the roads, covered in mud and debris.

“I never thought I would experience this,” Eliu Sanchez, a resident of Sedavi, a town of 10,000 people on the outskirts of Valencia that was devastated by torrents of water and mud, told AFP, recounting a nightmare night.

“We saw a young man in a vacant lot” taking refuge on the roof of his car,” said the 32-year-old electrician. “He tried to jump” onto another vehicle, but the current “carried him away,” he said.

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Residents walk through mud past cars piled up by floods in Sedavi, near Valencia, eastern Spain, on October 30, 2024 © AFP – Manaure QUINTERO

According to authorities, the worst-hit town is Paiporta, in the southern suburbs of Valencia, where around 40 people have died, including a mother and her three-month-old baby who were swept away by the current.

The president of the Valencia region, Carlos Mazón, who announced emergency aid of 250 million euros, said that emergency services had carried out “200 land rescue operations and 70 air rescue operations” with helicopters during the day.

He also said that relief efforts had managed to reach all of the affected areas, while several villages remained cut off from the rest of the country for a good part of Wednesday.

High-speed trains between Madrid and Valencia, suspended since Wednesday, will remain so for at least “two to three weeks”, according to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente.

– Lack of responsiveness ? –

Overflowing of the Guadalhorce River in Alora, southern Spain, on October 29, 2024 © AFP – JORGE GUERRERO

According to the national meteorological agency (Aemet), more than 300 liters of water per square meter (30 cm) fell during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in several cities in the Valencia region, with a peak of 491 liters (49.1 cm) in the small village of Chiva. This is the equivalent of “a year's worth of rainfall,” she said.

The Spanish press, which is calling these storms the “floods of the century,” is questioning the reactivity of the regional authorities: the warning message from the Civil Protection service to residents was, in fact, sent out on Tuesday after 8 p.m., while Aemet had issued a “red alert” in the morning and many localities were already flooded.

The Valencia region and the Spanish Mediterranean coast in general regularly experience the so-called “gota fria” (cold drop) phenomenon in the fall, an isolated depression at high altitude that causes sudden and extremely violent rains, sometimes lasting several days.

Scientists have been warning for several years that extreme weather phenomena, such as heat waves, and storms, are both increasingly frequent and increasingly intense due to climate change.

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