People in an area of Spain devastated by deadly floods are “living with corpses at home” while “there are children who don’t have food” – with the death toll rising to 2025.
The number of those killed in the floods which struck Spain on Tuesday and Wednesday include 202 in Valencia, according to regional authorities, as well as two in the Castilla La Mancha region and one in Andalusia.
Security forces and the army are searching for an unknown number of missing people, with many feared still trapped in wrecked vehicles or flooded garages.
A British woman who spends part of the year in her home in Alicante, southeastern Spain, told Sky News she narrowly escaped death after being trapped in her car with her husband.
‘No milk, no water’
Scenes of destruction have been left in the wake of the powerful floodwaters, marking Spain’s worst natural disaster this century.
But more storms are expected, with the Spanish weather agency issuing alerts for strong rains in Tarragona, Catalonia, as well as part of the Balearic Islands.
Image: People clean up a mud-covered street after heavy rains in Alfafar. Pic: Reuters
Image: Firefighters pump out the floodwater out of a tunnel where vehicles are piled up, after heavy rains in Alfafar. Pic: Reuters
Juan Ramon Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, one of the hardest hit towns, said the aid isn’t nearly enough for residents trapped in an “extreme situation”.
“There are people living with corpses at home.
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“It’s very sad. We are organising ourselves, but we are running out of everything,” he said. “We go with vans to Valencia, we buy and we come back, but here we are totally forgotten.”
A resident from the same town described the situation as a “disaster”, as they said: “There are a lot of elderly people who don’t have medicine. There are children who don’t have food. We don’t have milk, we don’t have water.
“We have no access to anything,” they told state television station TVE.
“No one even came to warn us on the first day.”
Cars have been piled high on top of each other, homes and businesses have been swept away, trees have been uprooted, and roads and bridges have been left unrecognisable.
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Image: Damaged cars along a road on the outskirts of Valencia. Pic: Reuters
Image: People work to clear a mud-covered street in Paiporta. Pic: Reuters
“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” Spain’s transport minister Oscar Puente said.
In the Valencian district of La Torre, nine dead bodies were discovered inside a garage – with a local police officer among the victims.
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Man pulled from deadly floods
Luis Sanchez, a welder, said he saved several people from floodwaters rushing through the V-31 motorway south of Valencia city.
“I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing,” Mr Sanchez said.
“The firefighters took the elderly first, when they could get in. I am from nearby, so I tried to help and rescue people. People were crying all over, they were trapped.”
Read more on this story:Lives have been ripped apart in SpainFloods hit ‘like a tsunami’ – eyewitness
Satellite images from NASA show how severe flooding has impacted Valencia and its surrounding towns.
The images, captured on 30 October, show large areas to the south of the city covered in floodwater.
The Turia River, which runs through the city, can be seen at a much higher level.
The Pobles del Sud, a large lake nearby, overflowed. Much of the area surrounding the lake was covered in floodwater.
The worst of the destruction was concentrated in Paiporta, a municipality next to Valencia city, where 62 people have been reported dead.
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Spanish town ‘worst-hit’ by floods
Mayor Maribel Albalat told national broadcaster RTVE: “We found a lot of elderly people in the town centre. There were also a lot of people who came to get their cars out of their garages… it was a real trap.”
What has caused the devastation?
The flooding events in Spain have been hard to witness. But the rainfall there could never have been anything but devastating.
Chiva, located just to the west of Valencia, received 491mm of rain in an eight-hour window.
Some 100-200mm fell in surrounding areas with the accumulation of running water producing apocalyptic scenes.
In addition there have been over 20,000 lightning strikes.
Whilst the rainfall totals are astounding in themselves, this part of the world is simply not accustomed to huge quantities of water falling from the sky.
In an average year, Spain would expect somewhere between 50 and 100 mm of rain throughout the entire month of October but Valencia and Andalusia would expect far less – just 60–70mm.
So how did this happen? It’s attributable to a DANA, a “depresion aislada en niveles altos” or a “cut-off low”.
This is a low pressure system which becomes slow moving or stationary, blocked by high pressure elsewhere, which can only keep shedding its rain over the same area for long periods of time.
These systems are not that unusual. They occur when cool air from the north is drawn across the Mediterranean in late summer and autumn when the waters are war. The temperature differential enhances storms and rainfall totals.
But whilst not uncommon, this one was certainly extreme.
And it hasn’t gone yet. This same system has continued to bring further heavy rain and thunderstorms today, but it has now moved a little further north and east, heading toward the French border and currently remaining to the west of Barcelona.
The rain and thunderstorms are likely to continue for a few days yet with the Tarragona and Castellon regions still under an amber warning while a yellow warning remains in force for both eastern and western Spain.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Thursday morning that Valencia had been declared a disaster zone and the priority was to find victims and missing people.
He also urged those affected to stay at home as more torrential rain was forecast.
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“The most important thing is that I know Spanish people are aware that this phenomenon has not finished,” he said.
Sky News’ Europe correspondent Adam Parsons, reporting from Valencia, said the devastation suffered in the region is “enormous”.
“What we’re witnessing now are the locals here who are waking up and seeing what’s happened to their town and what has happened is something almost apocalyptic,” he said.
A nearby shop was left “absolutely wrecked” and looked like a “bomb has gone off in there”, he added.
Three days of mourning have been declared in Spain, beginning on Thursday.
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory, and scientists have linked its strength to climate change.
Source : Sky News
