In Spain, the return of the cold spell raises fears of new floods – Libération

The trauma is still there and the fear of retaliation is growing. This Tuesday, November 12, on the sites of all the major Spanish media, people are talking with concern about the return of “dana”. Acronym for “isolated high altitude depression”, also called the cold drop phenomenon, the dana is the meteorological phenomenon responsible for the torrential rains which fell on the Valencia region at the end of October and which caused sudden and deadly floods. At the start of the week, a new episode of dana should hit Spain. Aemet, the National Meteorological Agency, placed part of the regions of Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Catalonia on orange alert for heavy rain on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, raising fears of a return of flooding. Cut in two by a mudslide near Almeria, in the south of the country, the A-7 motorway got a taste of it on Monday.

In Valencia and surrounding towns, the worst of the bad weather is expected to occur on Wednesday. Up to 120 mm of rain could fall in places within twelve hours according to Aemet. Enough to fear a new disaster, while many municipalities still bear the scars of the sudden rise in water levels on October 29. Although public transport – buses and trains – should have almost all resumed connections between Valencia and the rest of Spain this week, the situation has not yet returned to normal. On site, thousands of volunteers, soldiers, police and rescuers are still hard at work repairing infrastructure, distributing aid and searching for the last missing people. The authorities are still without news of around twenty people – hopes of finding them alive are almost zero – while 222 people died in the floods, according to the latest report released by the government.

There also remains mud in places, brown marks which still stick to the road and on the walls, despite the clearing and a nauseating smell floats in the air, described by residents as resembling “the rotten egg” or “sulfur”. And “no outbreak linked to flooding has been detected” according to the Minister of Health, several volunteers complained of migraines and dizziness after breathing these odors for too long. A monitoring protocol has been put in place to “prevent infections and diseases transmitted by agents found in mud and stagnant water”. Furthermore, the health authorities of the province of Valencia say they pay particular attention to the risk of mosquito proliferation and call on municipalities to adopt measures to prevent them.

Around fifty French soldiers and firefighters sent

To lend a hand to the personnel mobilized for two weeks, Spain requested European solidarity on Monday evening – until now it had not responded to proposals from certain countries to send reinforcements. “As part of the European civil protection mechanism, forty rescuers from military civil security formations and around ten territorial firefighters will be engaged in the coming hours to support the hard-hit population”announced immediately on X Bruno Retailleau.

The Valencian region also saw the arrival of King Felipe VI on Tuesday who visited soldiers deployed there. The sovereign's last visit, alongside Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional head of government Carlos Mazón, was explosive: the three men were targeted with insults and mud throwing from victims exasperated by the lack of responsiveness. authorities during the disaster. Mazón, a 50-year-old lawyer and figure in the Popular Party (right), is accused of having been slow to react even though Aemet had issued a red alert on the morning of October 29. On Saturday November 9, 130,000 people gathered in the streets of Valencia to call for his resignation.

On Monday, Pedro Sánchez asked the population to be patient. “Later, the political debate will focus on things to improve in the face of this climate emergency and, without doubt, in the face of taking political responsibilities which, of course, will have to be justified”declared the Prime Minister, calling for a move to “listen to science” and to “strengthen public services” to bring “an effective response to natural disasters” – an attack on Mazón, accused of being climate skeptic. The Prime Minister from the PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, also announced a plan of 110 new measures costing a total of 3.8 billion euros to help farmers in particular and finance the evacuation of “thousands of tons of mud and debris”. These measures come in addition to a 10.6 billion euro plan already presented last week by Pedro Sánchez to help disaster victims and affected municipalities.