The town of Sedavi, in the suburbs of Valencia, was violently affected by the flash floods which affected the country. The mayor is sounding the alarm, ensuring that the authorities underestimate “the extent of the damage” in his city.
The municipality of Sedavi facing the emergency. The mayor of this municipality in the province of Valencia says that after the dramatic floods in recent days in Spain, the priority is “to remove the bodies and clean the streets to avoid infections and diseases.”
Quoted by Levante El Mercantil Valenciano, a regional daily, José Francisco Cabanes insists on the urgency of sending them humanitarian aid: some residents “have been isolated for three days, the stores have been looted and we still have no electricity, water and gas.
The mayor is calling in particular for excavators to evacuate the tons of vehicles piled up in the streets – around 600 – “because if they are not evacuated, they will become a source of infections”.
“They are not aware of the extent of the damage in Sedavi”
The enormous quantities of mud spilled by the floods will “dry and block the entire sewer system” if they are not cleaned, which “would put the municipality in an even more critical situation”.
It’s “very urgent”, insists the councilor of this town of 10,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valence. So far, twelve deaths have been recorded there, but the mayor expects the toll to change. “They are not aware of the extent of the damage in Sedavi,” he criticizes.
“I never thought I would experience this,” Eliu Sánchez, a resident of Sedavi, told AFP, recounting a nightmarish night. “We saw a young man in a vacant lot taking refuge on the roof of his car,” said this 32-year-old electrician. “He tried to jump” onto another vehicle, but the current “took him away.”
The equivalent of “a year’s worth of precipitation” in one night
The Valencia region and the Spanish Mediterranean coast in general regularly experience, in autumn, the phenomenon known as “gota fria” (“cold drop”), an isolated depression at high altitude which causes sudden and extremely violent rains, sometimes for several days.
But the phenomenon had never reached such magnitude. According to the National Meteorological Agency, more than 300 liters of water per square meter (or 30 cm) fell during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in several towns in the Valencia region, with a peak of 491 liters/m2 ( 49.1 cm) in the small village of Chiva. This is the equivalent of “a year’s worth of precipitation,” she said.
