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Sunday, February 23, 2025

At least 63 people die in devastating flash floods in eastern Spain

by

116 days ago
20241030
A woman looks out from her balcony as vehicles are trapped in the street during flooding in Valencia, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A woman looks out from her balcony as vehicles are trapped in the street during flooding in Valencia, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Alberto Saiz

At least 63 peo­ple have died in east­ern Spain af­ter flash floods swept away cars, turned vil­lage streets in­to rivers and dis­rupt­ed rail lines and high­ways in the worst nat­ur­al dis­as­ter to hit the Eu­ro­pean na­tion in re­cent mem­o­ry.

Emer­gency ser­vices in the east­ern re­gion of Va­len­cia con­firmed a death toll of 62 peo­ple on Wednes­day. The cen­tral gov­ern­ment of­fice for Castil­la La Man­cha re­gion added that an 88-year-old woman was found dead in the city of Cuen­ca.

Rain­storms on Tues­day caused flood­ing in a wide swath of south­ern and east­ern Spain, stretch­ing from Mala­ga to Va­len­cia. Floods of mud-col­ored wa­ter tum­bled ve­hi­cles down streets at high speeds, while pieces of wood swirled in the wa­ter with house­hold items. Po­lice and res­cue ser­vices used he­li­copters to lift peo­ple from their homes and rub­ber boats to reach dri­vers trapped on the roofs of cars.

Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez said dozens of towns had been flood­ed and warned that the dan­ger is not over.

“For those who are look­ing for their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain,” Sánchez said in a tele­vised ad­dress. “Our pri­or­i­ty is to help you. We are putting all the re­sources nec­es­sary so that we can re­cov­er from this tragedy.”

Au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed sev­er­al miss­ing peo­ple late Tues­day, but the fol­low­ing morn­ing brought the shock­ing an­nounce­ment of dozens found dead.

“Yes­ter­day was the worst day of my life,” Ri­car­do Ga­baldón, the may­or of Utiel, a town in Va­len­cia, told na­tion­al broad­cast­er RTVE. He said sev­er­al peo­ple were still miss­ing in his town.

“We were trapped like rats. Cars and trash con­tain­ers were flow­ing down the streets. The wa­ter was ris­ing to three me­ters,” he said.

Over 1,000 sol­diers from Spain’s emer­gency re­sponse units were de­ployed to the dev­as­tat­ed ar­eas. Res­cue ser­vices were al­so rush­ing east­wards from oth­er parts of Spain. Spain’s cen­tral gov­ern­ment set up a cri­sis com­mit­tee to help co­or­di­nate res­cue ef­forts.

One el­der­ly cou­ple was res­cued from the up­per sto­ry of their house by a mil­i­tary unit us­ing a bull­doz­er, with three sol­diers ac­com­pa­ny­ing them in the huge shov­el.

Tele­vi­sion re­ports showed videos shot by pan­icked res­i­dents doc­u­ment­ing wa­ters flood­ing the ground floors of apart­ments, streams burst­ing their banks and bridges giv­ing way.

Spain has ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar au­tumn storms in re­cent years. Noth­ing, how­ev­er, com­pared to the dev­as­ta­tion over the last two days, which re­calls floods in Ger­many and Bel­gium in 2021 that saw 230 peo­ple killed.

The death toll will like­ly rise with oth­er re­gions yet to re­port vic­tims and search ef­forts con­tin­u­ing in ar­eas with dif­fi­cult ac­cess.

In the vil­lage of Letur in the neigh­bour­ing Castil­la La Man­cha re­gion, May­or Ser­gio Marín Sánchez said six peo­ple were miss­ing.

Spain is still re­cov­er­ing from a se­vere drought and con­tin­ues to reg­is­ter record high tem­per­a­tures in re­cent years. Sci­en­tists say in­creased episodes of ex­treme weath­er are like­ly linked to cli­mate change.

The storms un­leashed a freak hail­storm which punched holes in car win­dows and green­hous­es as well as a rarely seen tor­na­do.

Trans­port was al­so im­pact­ed. A high-speed train with near­ly 300 peo­ple on board de­railed near Mala­ga, al­though rail au­thor­i­ties said no one was hurt. High-speed train ser­vice be­tween Va­len­cia city and Madrid was in­ter­rupt­ed, as were com­muter lines.

Va­len­cian re­gion­al Pres­i­dent Car­los Mazón urged peo­ple to stay at home, with trav­el by road al­ready dif­fi­cult due to fall­en trees and wrecked ve­hi­cles.

As the wa­ters fell, thick lay­ers of mud mixed with refuse made streets un­rec­og­niz­able.

“The neigh­bour­hood is de­stroyed, all the cars are on top of each oth­er, it’s lit­er­al­ly smashed up,” Chris­t­ian Viena, a bar own­er in the Va­len­cian vil­lage of Bar­rio de la Torre, said by phone. “Every­thing is a to­tal wreck, every­thing is ready to be thrown away. The mud is al­most 30 cen­time­ters deep.”

Out­side Viena’s bar, peo­ple were ven­tur­ing out to see what they could sal­vage. Cars were piled up and the streets were filled with clumps of wa­ter-logged branch­es.

Rel­a­tives of the miss­ing filled so­cial me­dia and lo­cal tele­vi­sion and ra­dio out­lets with ap­peals to find their loved ones.

Leonar­do En­rique told RTVE that his fam­i­ly had been search­ing for hours for his son, Leonar­do En­rique Rivera, 40, who was dri­ving a de­liv­ery van when it be­gan to rain. His son had sent a mes­sage say­ing his van was flood­ing and that he had been hit by an­oth­er ve­hi­cle when he was near Rib­ar­ro­ja, an in­dus­tri­al town which is one of the worst af­fect­ed, En­rique said.

Lo­cat­ed south of Barcelona down the Mediter­ranean coast, Va­len­cia is a tourist des­ti­na­tion known for its beach­es, cit­rus or­chards, and as the home of Spain’s pael­la rice dish.

Like some oth­er ar­eas of Spain, Va­len­cia has gorges and small riverbeds that spend much of the year com­plete­ly dry but quick­ly fill with wa­ter when it rains. Many of them pass through pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

The rain had sub­sided in Va­len­cia by late Wednes­day morn­ing as the storm head­ed north, prompt­ing au­thor­i­ties in the Barcelona re­gion to is­sue weath­er alerts.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ist Tere­sa Medra­no in Madrid con­tributed to this re­port.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) —

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