“Avoid travel. Rivers overflow and floods may occur,” she warned. A message widely relayed by the authorities, keen to avoid a new disaster scenario, two weeks after the tragic bad weather which devastated the south-east of the country.
According to Aemet, torrential rains did indeed fall during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, with accumulations of 110 liters of water per square meter (110 millimeters) in Alcudia de Veo, in the hinterland of Valencia , and 88 liters (88 mm) in Chiva, a village already hit by floods at the end of October.
But this heavy rainfall caused little damage, even if streets were flooded and roads were occasionally cut, both in Andalusia and in the Valencia region. Above all, they did not cause any new victims, according to the authorities.
Floods in Spain: 32 people still missing in the Valencia region
“Prevention is better than cure”
Due to these new bad weather conditions, the regional government of Valencia announced on Wednesday a series of preventive measures in a total of 163 municipalities, with class closures and traffic restrictions.
“The night was complicated (…) We have never seen so much rain,” Jordi Mayor, mayor of Cullera, testified on public television TVE. In this seaside town located near Valencia, the streets were still “impassable” Thursday morning but the damage was limited.
In Malaga, where air traffic was severely disrupted on Wednesday, more than 4,200 people were evacuated preventively, mainly near the Guadalhorce, a river threatened with overflowing. School has also been suspended for nearly 500,000 schoolchildren.
“I know that this has created problems for many families” but “prevention is better than cure,” justified the president of the Andalusian region, Juanma Moreno, on Thursday, specifying that the evacuated people would probably not be able to return home before Friday.
For Jess Neumann, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, “the speed of the evacuations probably saved many lives.” This “shows the extent to which it is possible and necessary to act quickly when alerts are issued,” he judged in an analytical note.
New torrential rains in Spain, two weeks after the floods
Start of return to normal
On Thursday, the beginnings of a return to normal were nevertheless visible in the areas concerned. In Malaga, the Billie Jean King Cup tennis tournament (formerly FedCup) was able to begin, after a 24-hour postponement linked to rain.
In the Valencia region, restrictions on the movement of private cars were also lifted, while rail traffic with Madrid resumed at the end of the morning, for the first time in two weeks.
This return to normal is, however, more complicated in the areas ravaged by the floods of October 29, where the clearance work and restoration of infrastructure continues, as does the search for the 16 people still missing.
The latter is concentrated “on a strip 200 kilometers long and 60 kilometers wide”, particularly near the mouth of the Turia river, where the bodies could have been carried by the waves, said Rosa Touris, spokesperson for the Cecopi, emergency committee set up after the floods.
Due to these new rains, the hearing of the president of the region Carlos Mazón, supposed to explain Thursday before the regional parliament on his management of the disaster, was postponed until Friday.
The conservative leader, who is the subject of strong criticism for his management of the floods of October 29, could announce on this occasion a reshuffle of his government, according to Spanish media.
