Spain continues to count its dead. The death toll from this week's apocalyptic floods in the southeast of the country reached 205 deaths on Friday, as searches continued to find the missing.
“At present, and provisionally, the number of victims is 202 people” for the Valencia region alone, according to a press release from the emergency services of this region, by far the most bereaved by the tragedy. Two other deaths also took place in the neighboring region of Castile-La Mancha and one in Andalusia, while scores of people, the number of whom is not known, are still missing.
A “red alert” after heavy rain
Of this total, the vast majority of Deaths took place in the Valencia region alone, by far the most bereaved by the torrents of mud which devastated the south-eastern part of the country on Tuesday evening and during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. If the situation has calmed in this region, it has worsened on the coast of Huelva.
A “red alert” (maximum alert level synonymous with extreme risk) was issued on the night of Thursday to Friday November by the National Meteorological Agency (Aemet), due to heavy rains in the Huelva region, Andévalo and Condado. This has been extended for Huelva until at least 3 p.m.
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The previous report, which dated Thursday evening, reported 158 deaths, but the authorities had made no secret of the fact that the worst had to be expected, without however giving any indication of the number of people missing. For the first time on Thursday, the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, put forward an estimate on this subject, declaring during a press conference in Madrid that on Thursday evening there were “dozens and dozens” of disappeared.
A historical assessment
This toll is already the most serious since the floods which left 300 dead in October 1973 in Spain. More than 1,200 soldiers are deployed on the ground, mainly in the Valencia region, alongside firefighters, police and rescue workers who are seeking to locate possible survivors and are working to clear the disaster areas.
According to Aemet, more than 300 liters of water per square meter (or 30 cm) fell overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in several towns in the Valencia region, with a peak of 491 liters (49.1 cm). in the small village of Chiva. This is the equivalent of “a year’s worth of precipitation,” she said.
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.
Scientists say extreme weather events, such as heat waves and storms, are both becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.
