Almost a week after the start of floods which left at least 217 dead in the south and east of Spain, emergency services are still looking for possible new victims.
Six days after the floods which left at least 217 dead in Spain, emergency services continued their searches around Valencia on Monday, November 4, where the authorities still fear seeing the death toll rise.
It is in this region that the human toll is heaviest with 213 deaths recorded. The toll could rise further since many completely flooded underground car parks have not yet been inspected.
Concern about underground car parks
“At the beginning, there was a morgue set up for around 100 victims, but we quickly understood that it would not be enough,” General Javier Marcos, head of the Unit, explained during a press conference. military emergency (UME). “We have planned a morgue which can accommodate 400 dead today,” he continued.
The day after a chaotic day, during which an angry crowd greeted with insults and mud throwing the visit of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and King Felipe VI to one of the localities most affected by the floods, the priority The location of the missing remains, the precise number of whom has never been communicated by the authorities.
The final death toll could be higher and the authorities are particularly concerned about the situation in many underground car parks, which are completely flooded and which have not yet been completely inspected.
This is particularly the case of the Bonaire car park, a vast shopping center in Aldaia, a town of 31,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valencia. With a capacity of 5,700 places, almost half of which are in the basement, the latter is completely flooded.
“The shopping center is devastated in its upper part. And at the bottom it is a terrible unknown. We are not sure what we will find,” Aldaia Mayor Guillermo Lujan told public television TVE.
In recent days, UME personnel, who respond to natural disasters, have installed numerous pumps to begin evacuating water. “All means of the armed forces are being used to dry out this parking lot, but there are millions of liters,” admitted General Javier Marcos. Divers have managed to penetrate the underground, without spotting any bodies so far.
Late Monday morning, the police confirmed that they had not found any victims in the first 50 vehicles inspected. On Monday morning, the Spanish meteorological agency (Aemet) officially assured that the “meteorological crisis” situation had ended in the Valencia region.
Catalonia very affected
But the concern moved in the middle of the day some 350 km further north, to Barcelona, placed on red alert. Torrential rains there led to cancellations or very significant delays for some 70 flights at the airport. Eighteen other flights also had to be diverted. High-speed train traffic between Barcelona and Madrid was also disrupted.
Spain: still hundreds of missing – 04/11
Impressive images, widely relayed on social networks, also showed vehicles blocked on a highway near the Catalan capital or flooded streets in neighboring towns. The Aemet red alert ended at the beginning of the afternoon.
In the communities most affected by last week's floods, anger and distress prevail six days after the tragedy. Many streets remain clogged with piles of cars, mud and trash, and homes are still without telephone or electricity.
“I was born here and I lost everything,” said Teresa Gisbert, a resident of Sedavi, another disaster-stricken town in the suburbs of Valencia. In his house, a meter-long dark line of mud is visible where the water has penetrated. “They told us 'rain alert' but they should have told us 'flood',” laments this 62-year-old woman.
This Sunday, November 3, this feeling of helplessness transformed into a flood of anger when King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia went with Pedro Sánchez and the conservative president of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón to Paiporta, a municipality considered the epicenter of the tragedy. “Assassins! Assassins!” shouted exasperated residents. Some people threw mud and various objects at the procession, while insults were poured out against the Prime Minister and Carlos Mazón, who were quickly evacuated by the security services.
