In Spain, search operations continue. Six days after the torrential rains which caused deadly floods in the south-east of the country, the authorities feared, on Monday November 4, the discovery of new victims. According to a latest report, at least 217 people have died: 213 in the Valencia region alone, three in Castile-La Mancha, where the lifeless body of a septuagenarian woman was discovered on Sunday twelve kilometers from the place of her disappearance, and one in Andalusia.
Cautiously, the authorities insist that the toll could rise, without however giving the number of people still missing. However, a figure circulated all weekend, sometimes estimating the number of people missing at 1,900, sometimes at 2,500. While Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said on Sunday that “more accessible areas” had been inspected by the emergency services deployed on the ground, the chances of finding people alive in the most remote areas are diminishing.
It all started with a document sent on Friday by the daily The Diarysigned by the Rescue Coordination Center. The text mentions 2,500 missing and some 600 people found for Thursday alone. However, this estimate from calls to 112 is not reliable, according to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska Gomez. These calls to the emergency number occurred “while communications had not been restored”, he explained. “Moreover, people who find their loved ones do not systematically report it”he continued, adding that communicating on approximations could harm citizens’ trust in the authorities.
On Saturday, sources confirmed to The World that the authorities were working from a list of 2,500 names, a list revised downwards as information was cross-checked. And for good reason: the gradual restoration of electricity and communication networks has allowed people considered missing to reconnect with their loved ones, without the authorities being informed. According to government sources cited by The Country85% of landline telephone service had been restored on Monday and 62% of the mobile network.
It is possible that people have been reported as missing by several people, via 112 or via the special call number opened by the regional government, thus creating duplicates. So many difficulties put forward to explain the sole communication on people found dead. But again, the task is slow and difficult.
Several days can pass between the moment a body is found and the moment the victim is taken into account in the report communicated by the authorities, explains The Country. According to the daily, “the identification process involves the movement of forensic teams”. Fingerprints are taken but also biological samples in case DNA analysis is necessary for identification. These data are then “cross-referenced with data provided by relatives of missing persons”continues The Countryto explain the impression of stagnation in the official results.
More than 53,000 hectares were affected by the floods, in the Valencia region alone. According to the European Copernicus Observatory, some 190,000 people and 3,200 km of roads were affected. But on Monday morning, television channels focused their cameras on the town of Aldaia. More precisely on the entrance to the parking lot of the Bonaire shopping center, located in this town of 31,000 inhabitants, in the southern suburbs of Valencia.
For several days, the personnel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), who intervene in natural disasters, have been carrying out pumping operations to access the building, still partly underwater. “The mall is devastated at the top. And at the bottom, it's a terrible unknown. We're not sure what we're going to find,” said the mayor of Aldaia on public television TVE.
According to sources close to the operations cited by the RTVE channel, the firefighters at work use submersible drones to explore submerged areas. At midday, the channel declared that 50 vehicles had been inspected, without finding any victims. In front of another parking lot, a firefighter from Granada told France 2 that there could be “still between 12 and 15 people dead inside”. “They were seen entering the parking lot, but were not seen leaving,” he explained.
Six days after the tragedy, many streets remain clogged with piles of cars, mud and trash. In these images released Monday by the Guardia Civil, we see a sniffer dog spotting the body of a victim in an ocean of mud, in the town of Chiva, 35 km east of Valencia.
The head of Alicante's air resources spoke to RTVE on Monday morning about the images transmitted by the drones used by the rescue teams. “From what we see, there is a lot, a lot of desolation in the countryside, especially because the large amount of mud prevents security forces from reaching the areas on foot,” he explained.
As we move away from Valencia, the landscape gives way to towns surrounded by fields and hilly, even steep, areas popular with tourists for its hiking trails. As here near Cheste, the emergency services must inspect each of the vehicles found, while thousands of car wrecks are still inaccessible.
This topography can further slow down the progress of emergency services, as in these images, shot near Letur, in the province of Albacete. Here, the woman's body carried away by the waves was discovered 12 km from the place of her disappearance, declared the government delegate in the Castile-La Mancha region during a press conference. In the Valencia region, helicopters began to fly over the beaches, seeking to find the bodies of possible victims carried to the Mediterranean.
