MADRID (AP) — Three days after historic flash floods ravaged several towns south of Valencia, eastern Spain, the initial shock gave way Friday to anger, frustration and a wave of solidarity.
Many streets are still blocked by piled-up vehicles and debris, in some cases trapping residents in their homes. Some places still have no electricity, running water or stable telephone connections.
Residents turned to the media to ask for help.
“This is a disaster. There are many elderly people who do not have medication. There are children who have no food. We have no milk, we have no water. We have no access to anything,” a resident of Alfafar, one of the worst-hit towns in southern Valencia, told state television TVE. “No one even came to warn us on the first day.”
So far, 158 bodies have been recovered – 155 in Valencia, two in the Castilla La Mancha region and another in Andalusia – following Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory. Security force members and soldiers are busy searching for an unknown number of missing people; many feared they were still trapped in wrecked vehicles or flooded garages.
And as authorities repeat again and again, more storms are expected. The Spanish weather agency has issued warnings of heavy rainfall in Tarragona, Catalonia, and part of the Balearic Islands.
Meanwhile, flood survivors and volunteers are involved in the herculean task of clearing a ubiquitous layer of dense mud.
Residents of communities such as Paiporta, where at least 62 people have died, and Catarroja, have walked miles to Valencia to get supplies, passing neighbors from unaffected areas who brought water, essential products or shovels to help remove the mud.
Juan Ramón Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, one of the hardest-hit towns, said the aid is not nearly enough for residents stuck in an “extreme situation.”
“There are people who live with corpses at home. It’s very sad. We are organizing ourselves, but we are running out of things,” he told reporters. “We go to Valencia in vans, we buy and we come back, but here we are completely forgotten.”
The rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, leaving many uninhabitable.
Social networks have channeled the needs of those affected. Some posted images of missing people in the hope of getting information about their whereabouts, while others launched initiatives such as Suport Mutu – or Mutual Support – which matches requests for help with people offering help; and others organized collections of basic goods across the country or launched fundraisers.
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood in recent history. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also responsible for increasing temperatures and droughts in Spain and the warming of the Mediterranean Sea.
Man-made climate change has doubled the chance of a storm like this week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a partial analysis published Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a group of dozens of international scientists who study the role of global warming. study Earth in extreme weather.
Spain has suffered a drought for almost two years, which worsened flooding because the dry soil was so hard that it could not absorb rain.
In August 1996, a flood destroyed a campsite along the Gallego River in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people.
