Death toll in Spain Floods: 95 people, over a million homes left without electricity

Sedavi:

Rescuers rushed out on Thursday to find survivors and victims of Spain’s once-in-a-generation floods, which have left at least 95 people dead, left towns swamped by muddy floods and overturned cars strewn in the streets.

About 1,000 soldiers joined police and firefighters in a grim search for bodies in the Valencia region as three days of mourning began in Spain. The number of victims will increase because “there are many missing people,” Territorial Policy Minister Angel Victor Torres predicted late Wednesday.

A year’s worth of rain fell on the eastern city in a few hours Valencia and surrounding areas, on Tuesday, streams of water and mud rolled through towns and cities.

Authorities said Paiporta, on the outskirts of Valencia, was destroyed and about 40 people died, including a mother and child swept away by the torrent.

Rescuers began pulling survivors from rooftops using helicopters, while others searched homes, some with water up to their necks.

As dawn broke on Thursday, tens of thousands of homes were still without power or drinking water, and many roads were blocked by the bodies of hundreds of cars and trucks swept away by sudden torrents.

Emergency services carried out 200 ground rescues and 70 air evacuations on Wednesday, said the head of Valencia’s regional government, Carlos Mazon.

Valencia’s emergency services announced that 92 people had provisionally died, adding that bodies were still being recovered. Two people were killed in neighboring Castile-La Mancha and another victim was reported in southern Andalusia, officials said.

AFP journalists observed a sea of ​​​​piled cars and mud-covered streets in Sedavi, a suburb of the Mediterranean city of Valencia.

Startled residents struggled to remove sediment and water from their homes.

“Spain Cries”

In Ribarroja del Turia on the outskirts of Valencia, city councilor Esther Gomez said workers were stuck overnight in an industrial area “with no chance of being rescued” as streams overflowed.

“It’s been a long time since this happened and we are scared,” she told AFP.

According to the Spanish weather service AEMET, Chiva, west of Valencia, recorded 491 mm of rainfall in just eight hours on Tuesday – almost as much as fell in a year.

“All of Spain is crying with you… We will not abandon you,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told the victims and their families in a televised speech.

Sanchez was due to travel to Valencia on Thursday.

The disaster cannot be considered the end and “we will mobilize all necessary resources for as long as necessary so that we can recover from this tragedy,” he added.

King Felipe VI said he was “devastated” by the disaster and offered his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims.

Damage to telephone networks and flooded roads is making it difficult to reach affected communities, but emergency services’ access to all urban centers was restored on Wednesday evening, Mazon said.

According to the energy company Iberdrola, around 155,000 homes were left without electricity due to the storm in the Valencia region.

The European Union has launched its Copernicus satellite system to help coordinate Spanish rescue teams, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in Brussels.

The bloc also offered to use its civil protection mechanism to send further reinforcements, she added.

The warning system was checked

Officials in the Valencia region announced that survivors had been placed in temporary facilities such as fire stations.

Rail and air transport remained severely disrupted. Rail infrastructure authority Adif has announced that the high-speed line between Valencia and Madrid will be suspended for at least four days.

The flood death toll in Spain is the highest since 1973, when at least 150 people were estimated to have died in the southeastern provinces of Granada, Murcia and Almeria.

Scientists have warned that extreme weather events, such as the storm that hit Valencia, are becoming more intense, lasting longer and occurring more frequently as a result of human-induced climate change.

Such extremes “could overwhelm the capacity of existing defense systems and contingency plans, even in a relatively wealthy country such as Spain,” said Leslie Mabon, senior lecturer in environmental systems at Britain’s Open University.

The high death toll followed warnings of extreme rainfall, which indicated a failure of Valencia’s flood warning system, said Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading.

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