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Spain: More than 70 dead, many missing in Dantesque floods

Devastating floods claimed more than 70 lives in southeastern Spain on Tuesday evening and overnight, while the latest provisional toll showed scores of people still missing on Wednesday, including 70 dead, in the Valencia region alone. Two other deaths were recorded in the neighboring region of Castile-La Mancha. The number is expected to rise as rescuers are still searching for more people, “I was scared for my life. It didn't rain, the river was overflowing. Thank God, I'm alive,” Maria. Retired Hernandez, 70, who lives in Utial, 60 kilometers west of Valencia, was devastated by torrents of water and mud, told AFP the day before that the region, but unprecedented rains the previous day and night had drenched many areas, cut them off from the world, while tens of thousands of residents were still without power, leading the national weather watch to red The agency (Aemet) to issue an alert, they were so brutal and violent that many residents could not take shelter – “never seen anything like this” – in Chiva, a small village in the interior of Valencia, 491 liters of water fell. According to Emmett, who spoke of the “extraordinary accumulation”, m2 in just eight hours, some asked if the local government did not wait too long before asking the population to take shelter. The government announced three days of national mourning starting Thursday, the day Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez plans to visit the scene, and in a brief televised speech in the morning, Sánchez offered support to the families of the victims and those affected. He called for vigilance because, he said, “we cannot consider that this catastrophic episode is over,” and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen assured that she was “ready to help Spain.” For his part, the sovereign King Felipe VI, in a message about a thousand troops supported by helicopters, was on the ground to lend a hand in the rescue effort in the most affected municipalities: L'Alcudia in the Valencia region and Letur in the neighboring province of Albacete (Castile-La Mancha region), where six people were missing as floods flooded streets and washed away cars. …) I've never seen it,” TVE Consuelo, the mayor of Horno de Alcedo, a suburb of Valencia, told Tarazona. The rising water levels were “horrendous,” she said. “We were suddenly submerged without being able to warn our neighbors.” – “Cold Drop” – All schools will be closed on Wednesday. Valencia Town Hall also announced that several flights due to depart from Valencia Airport (East) were diverted or canceled due to the storm's impact on key points on the Madrid and Valencia railway network, usually in autumn. The so-called “Mediterranean Coast Drop”), an isolated high-altitude depression, causes sudden and extremely heavy rainfall, sometimes for days. Scientists have been warning for years that extreme weather events like heat waves and storms are becoming longer and longer. “These flash floods in Spain are another grim reminder of climate change and its chaos,” Jess Newman, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, underscored in a note. We need to think seriously about designing”, he warned.bur-CHZ/ybl