Five days after horrific floods destroyed towns in eastern Spain and killed at least 214 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pledged to deploy 10,000 soldiers and police to “improve” recovery efforts. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the government’s response is growing.
Authorities in the hard-hit Valencia region said Sunday that torrents of muddy water had destroyed towns and infrastructure, killing at least 211 people in the region, including two in Castilla-La Mancha and one in La Mancha. It was announced that hopes of finding more survivors were fading. Andalusia.
Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego, reporting from Valencia, said authorities were concerned that more bodies could be recovered from the underground garage.
The tragedy is already Europe’s worst flood-related disaster since 1967, when at least 500 people died in Portugal.
Angry crowds hurled mud at Spain’s king, queen and prime minister as they visited one of the worst-hit towns on Sunday.
Here’s what you need to know about Spain’s worst disaster in memory.
What was the country’s response?
The management of the crisis, which has been classified as Level 2 of 3 by the Valencian government, is in the hands of local authorities, who can ask the central government for help mobilizing resources.
At the request of Valencia’s President Carlos Mazon, of the Conservative Popular Party, Socialist Prime Minister Sánchez announced on Saturday that an additional 5,000 soldiers would be sent to help with rescue operations, clearing debris and providing water and food.
Sanchez said the government would send an additional 5,000 national police officers to the region.
Maison came under fire last year over his decision to abolish the Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE), created by his leftist predecessor to respond to emergencies such as floods and wildfires.
About 2,000 soldiers from the Military Emergency Forces, the military’s first intervention force in natural disasters and humanitarian crises, are already engaged in emergency operations, along with about 2,500 private security personnel and 1,800 national police officers. 4,500 people were rescued.
Thousands of volunteers from different regions also rallied to help, carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic food, delivering supplies and helping clean up the most affected areas.
On Sunday, angry residents of Paiporta, one of the worst-hit areas, threw mud and shouted abuse at King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who were visiting the town for the first time. More than 60 people lost their lives.
According to Spanish broadcaster RTVE, Sanchez was evacuated shortly after authorities began walking through the mud-covered streets and talking to residents. Police, some on horseback, had to intervene to stop dozens of people brandishing shovels and throwing mud.
Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego reported from Paiporta that “the king appears to have become a kind of lightning rod for the anger of people who are looking to some sort of authority to explain the dire situation here.”
She added that there was still a “huge community effort” to help the victims and authorities were now “working as quickly as possible” to rescue survivors.
“There’s mud all over the city,” she said, also noting concerns about the spread of disease.
what happened?
The storm was concentrated in the Tuna and Turia river basins, creating a wall of water that flooded the banks of the Poyo River and caught people unaware as they went about their daily lives Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning. It was.
Spain’s National Weather Service said the floods were “extraordinary”, saying more rain fell in eight hours than in the previous 20 months in the hard-hit Chiva region.
When authorities sent out alerts on their cellphones warning of the severity of flooding and asking people to stay home, many people were already out on the streets working or in low-lying areas or underground parking lots where they were exposed to water. It became a death trap.
What caused this massive flash flood?
Scientists trying to explain the cause of this disaster believe there are two links to human-induced climate change.
One is that warm air traps rain and releases more rain. The other is changes in the jet stream, the river of air above the surface that drives weather systems across the planet, that can cause extreme weather.
Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding was a so-called “cutoff cyclonic storm system” that moved in from an unusually wavy, stagnant jet stream. The system remained hovering over the area, dumping rain. Meteorologists say this happens so often that it’s called DANA, the Spanish acronym for the system.
Another factor is the unusually high temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea. In mid-August, the highest surface temperature on record was recorded at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of Brunel University’s Center for Flood Risk and Resilience in London.
Warmer temperatures increase the ability to produce water vapor, leading to heavier rainfall.
The extreme weather comes after Spain battled a prolonged drought in 2022 and 2023.
Experts say drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.
Has something like this happened to you before?
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this latest downpour was the most powerful flash flood in recent memory.
Elderly residents of Paiporta, the epicenter of the tragedy, said Tuesday’s floods were three times as strong as the 1957 floods, which killed at least 81 people.
This episode led to the diversion of the Turia Channel and meant that large parts of the town were spared from flooding.
Valencia suffered two other major DANA disasters in the 1980s, one in 1982 that killed around 30 people and another five years later that broke rainfall records.
The flash floods were even worse than the August 1996 flood that washed away a campsite along the Gallego River in the northeastern town of Viezcas, killing 87 people.
