Rescuers in Spain are battling to reach areas still cut off due to heavy rains as the death toll from catastrophic floods rose to 205 in Europe’s worst weather disaster in five decades.
In Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of the devastation this week, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to hunt for the missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a new weather alert in Huelva in southwestern Spain.
Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising. It is already Spain’s worst flood-related disaster in modern history and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.
In a matter of minutes on Tuesday, flash floods caused by heavy downpours swept away everything in their path – destroying roads, railway tracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks. The flooding also submerged thousands of hectares of farmland.
Thousands of people across Valencia took part in a mass cleanup on Friday. Residents of Chiva, one of the towns that witnessed some of the worst rainfall, were carrying buckets, shovels, brooms, mops and water bottles.
“Around a year’s worth of rain fell in a single day, and as you can tell, it’s had a devastating effect on the community. They’re still cut off – no electricity, no connection to any sort of power system here,” Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said, reporting from Chiva.
The Valencian town received more rain in eight hours on Tuesday than it had in the preceding 20 months, and water overflowed a gully that crosses the town, tearing up roads and walls of houses. The mayor, Amparo Fort, told RNE radio that “entire houses have disappeared. We don’t know if there were people inside or not.”
“It’s the community itself that has to rally around and sort out provisions for everyone as they’ve had no help so far from the regional government,” Gallego said, noting that people from other towns came to help clear the rubble.
‘In one night, it is all gone’
So far, 205 bodies have been recovered – 202 in Valencia, two in the Castille-La Mancha region south and east of Madrid, and one more in Andalusia in southern Spain.
Law enforcement agencies have rescued more than 4,500 people trapped by the floods, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said at a news conference from Valencia.
Members of the security forces and 1,700 soldiers from the emergency unit are searching for an unknown number of missing people. A further 500 soldiers will be deployed on Saturday, regional authorities said.
Meanwhile, more storms are expected. The Spanish weather agency issued alerts for strong rains in Tarragona, Catalonia, as well as part of the Balearic Islands.
In Valencia, many streets were still blocked by piled-up vehicles and debris, in some cases trapping residents in their homes. Some places still don’t have electricity, running water or stable telephone connections.
“The situation is unbelievable. It’s a disaster, and there is very little help,” Emilio Cuartero, a resident of Massanassa on the outskirts of the city of Valencia, told The Associated Press. “We need machinery, cranes so that the sites can be accessed. We need a lot of help and bread and water.”
Speaking to the AP, Chiva resident Juan Vicente Perez said: “I have been there all my life. All my memories are there. My parents lived there, … and now in one night, it is all gone.”
Before-and-after satellite images of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the catastrophe, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape inundated with muddy water. The V-33 highway was covered in a thick layer of mud.
