By Alicia León, UTIEL
Spain
Flash floods in Spain turned village streets into rivers, ruined homes, disrupted transportation and killed at least 95 people in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in recent memory.
Rainstorms that started
Tuesday and continued Wednesday caused flooding across southern and eastern
Spain, stretching from Malaga to Valencia. Muddy torrents tumbled
vehicles down streets at high speeds while debris and household items
swirled in the water. Police and rescue services used helicopters to lift
people from their homes and rubber boats to reach drivers stranded atop cars.
Emergency services in the
eastern region of Valencia confirmed a death toll of 92 people on Wednesday.
Another two casualties were reported in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha
region, while southern Andalusia reported one death.
“Yesterday was the worst day
of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told
national broadcaster RTVE on Wednesday. He said six residents perished and more
are missing.
“We were trapped like rats.
Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising
to 3 meters (9.8 feet),” he said.
AP correspondent Charles de
Ledesma reports Spanish authorities announce at least 51 people have died in
devastating flash floods.
“For those who are looking for
their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
said in a televised address.
Rescue personnel and more than
1,100 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units were deployed to affected
areas. Spain’s central government set up a crisis committee to coordinate
rescue efforts.
Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped
his bakery in Utiel when crushing water threatened to overwhelm him. He said it
rose to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) inside his business, and he fears his livelihood
has been destroyed.
“I had to get out of a window
as best I could because the water was already coming up to my shoulders. I took
refuge on the first floor with the neighbors and I stayed there all night,”
Berenguer told The Associated Press. “It has taken everything. I have to throw
everything out of the bakery, the freezers, ovens, everything.”
María Carmen Martínez, another
Utiel resident, witnessed a harrowing rescue.
“It was horrible, horrible.
There was a man there clinging to a fence who was falling and calling people
for help,” she said. “They couldn’t help him until the helicopters came and
took him away.”
One Valencia town, Paiporta,
suffered exceptional loss. Mayor Maribel Albalat told RTVE that over 30 people
died in the town of some 25,000 people. Those included six residents of a
senior residence. News media broadcast footage of seniors in chairs and wheelchairs
at a Paiporta nursing home, some crying out in apparent terror as the water
rose over their knees.
“We don’t know what happened,
but in 10 minutes the village was overflowing with water,” Albalat said.
Spain’s national weather
service said it rained more in eight hours in Valencia than it had in the
preceding 20 months, calling
the deluge “extraordinary.”
Located south of Barcelona on
the Mediterranean coast, Valencia is a tourist destination known for its
beaches, citrus orchards, and as the origin of the rice dish, paella. The
region 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.
As the floods receded, thick
layers of mud mixed with refuse made some streets unrecognizable.
“The neighborhood 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 (11 inches) 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.
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 in which 230 people were killed.
The death toll will likely
rise with other regions yet to report victims and search efforts continuing in
hard-to-reach places.
“We are facing a very
difficult situation,” minister of territory policies Ángel Víctor Torres said.
“The fact that we can’t give a number of the missing persons indicates the
magnitude of the tragedy.”
Spain is still recovering from
a severe drought and has registered record high
temperatures in recent years. Scientists say increased episodes of
extreme weather are likely
linked to climate change. The prolonged drought makes it more difficult for
the land to absorb high volumes of water.
The storms also unleashed a
rare tornado and a freak hailstorm that punched holes in car windows and
greenhouses.
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