At the same time, scenes of looting took place, with the government announcing the arrest of 39 people and promising that security forces would show “absolute firmness”.
It is to deal with this dramatic human situation that 500 soldiers belonging to the Military Emergency Unit (UME), a special unit intervening in natural disasters, were deployed Friday morning in the region.
“Mountains of cars”
The sending of these soldiers, announced Thursday evening by the central government, followed an urgent request from the president of the Valencia region, Carlos Mazón, whose government is overwhelmed by this unprecedented crisis
These reinforcements bring to 1,700 the number of soldiers deployed in the Valencia region, by far the most bereaved by the floods.
A sign of the authorities’ concern, Defense Minister Margarita Robles assured Friday that the government would send as many reinforcements as necessary and that they would stay as long as necessary.
“We will send 120,000 army men if necessary,” she said in an interview on TVE.
The army’s priorities are to reopen the roads to allow the delivery of aid, particularly food, but also to help in the search for missing people, the exact number of which is not known, but is very high. .
For the first time, the central government recognized Thursday, through the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, that there were “dozens and dozens” of missing people, which leads one to believe that the toll is expected to increase in the coming days.
“There are mountains of cars” piled up in the mud, testified Amparo Fort, the mayor of Chiva. “Many are empty, but for others, it is clear that they have occupants,” she explained.
Alerted too late to the seriousness of the situation, many people were surprised in their cars and were unable to escape.
In Valencia, a morgue was set up in the “City of Justice” to allow the identification of bodies, brought at regular intervals by ambulances from where employees in scrubs lower stretchers covered with a white sheet.
The survivors, who lack everything, must also face increasing insecurity, according to multiple testimonies.
“People were coming in to get pants, they were stealing,” Fernando Lozano, a resident of Aldaia, west of Valencia, told AFP on Thursday. who had gone to the city’s shopping center.
Solidarity
In this very dark panorama, the survivors could however count on spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity.
On this public holiday, hundreds of people – carrying brooms, shovels, food and even diapers – left Valencia, a city which was not affected by the floods, on foot to go to devastated neighboring towns. , noted AFP journalists.
Some said they were responding to a call from friends, others simply wanted to be helpful.
Although the sun shone on Valencia on Friday, vigilance was still required in certain areas of southern Spain.
The National Meteorological Agency (Aemet) has warned that heavy rainfall will continue this weekend.
Aemet has thus decreed a “red alert” (maximum risk level) in the province of Huelva, in Andalusia (southwest of the country, bordering Portugal).
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