“The danger is extreme”: two weeks after the floods which devastated the south-east of Spain, the Spanish Meteorological Agency on Wednesday evening placed the coast of the Valencia region on red alert, hit by new torrential rains .
“Avoid travel. Rivers overflow and floods may occur,” warned Aemet. The red alert, the maximum possible level, was activated at 9:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. GMT) and will remain in effect until 12:00 p.m. (11:00 GMT) on Thursday.
Up to 180 millimeters of rain could fall in twelve hours on the Valencia coast, according to Aemet. This led authorities to issue traffic restrictions and suspend classes on Thursday in more than a hundred communities, some already affected by the floods of October 29, which left at least 223 dead.
Only travel for “force majeure” is authorized, announced on X the conservative president of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón, widely criticized for his lack of responsiveness and his chaotic management of the floods of October 29. These measures are “exceptional” and aim to “ensure the safety of people”, he justified.
Due to torrential rains, rail traffic between Barcelona and Valencia was suspended, while the resumption of trains on the Madrid-Valencia line, scheduled for Thursday morning, was postponed, according to the Ministry of Transport.
The red alert corresponds to weather phenomena of “exceptional intensity”, presenting “a very high level of risk for the population”, according to Aemet.
– Preventive evacuations –
Due to this new “cold drop”, an isolated high altitude depression quite common in autumn on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, the meteorological agency has also placed the Andalusian province of Malaga (south) on red alert, until Thursday 8:00 a.m. (0700 GMT).
“Today, Malaga is paralyzed,” declared the president of the Andalusia region, Juan Manuel Moreno, during a trip to Seville. “Prevention is better than cure, we saw it in Valencia,” he insisted.
In the city, where several roads were flooded, the metro was closed, the train line to Madrid was suspended and several flights were canceled or diverted. More than 4,200 people were also evacuated “preventatively”, according to the authorities.
In this seaside town popular with tourists, bad weather also led to the postponement to Friday of a match between Spain and Poland as part of the Billie Jean King Cup in women's tennis, which was to be played on Wednesday afternoon.
“Everything is going well since we were warned last night,” Ida Maria Ledesma Martin, a resident of Campanillas, near Malaga, nevertheless assured AFP. “This morning, around 10 a.m., police officers went through the streets to warn everyone, the deployment is very good and I think it is not exaggerated at all.”
The red alert issued during the day for the province of Tarragona, in the north-east of the country, has for its part been downgraded to the orange level.
– Makeshift barricades –
In Paiporta, a town in the suburbs of Valencia considered to be the epicenter of the disaster of October 29, residents had set up makeshift barricades with bags of earth in front of the doors of houses on Wednesday morning, with the fear, in particular, of see the sewers still blocked by mud overflow.
These new rains have affected search operations for the 17 people still missing, concentrated mainly around waterways and on the coast, at river mouths.
“Search at sea was compromised due to the maritime storm,” Rosa Tourís, spokesperson for Cecopi, Valencia’s emergency committee, told the press. “After this meteorological episode, the tides will be evaluated again to determine the search areas,” she added.
As a precaution, several municipalities in the region had asked the thousands of volunteers who come every day to help residents clear the streets not to go to the disaster areas on Wednesday. Alerts were also issued on telephones.
The authorities in Valencia were strongly criticized for sending this warning message late on October 29. Indignation against the authorities gave rise to massive demonstrations on Saturday, the largest of which brought together 130,000 people in Valencia.
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