Floods worth a year of rain fall, kills 95 and damages crops

Meteorologists say a year’s worth of rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia killing least 95 people, sweeping away bridges and buildings and submerging farmland in a region that produces two-thirds of the citrus fruit grown in Spain, a leading global exporter.

Residents in the worst-hit places described seeing people clambering onto the roofs of their cars as a churning tide of brown water gushed through the streets, uprooting trees and dragging away chunks of masonry from buildings.

“It’s a river that came through,” said Denis Hlavaty, who waited for rescue on a ledge in the petrol station where he works in the regional capital. “The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 6.5 feet deep.”

Defence Minister Margarita Robles told Cadena Ser radio station that a military unit specialised in rescue operations would on Thursday start combing through the mud and debris with sniffer dogs in the worst-hit areas.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised to rebuild infrastructure that has been destroyed and said in a televised address: “For those who at this moment are still looking for their loved ones, the whole of Spain weeps with you.”

Trains to the cities of Madrid and Barcelona were cancelled due to the flooding, and schools and other essential services were suspended in the worst-hit areas, officials said.

Power company i-DE, owned by Europe’s biggest utility, Iberdrola, said about 150,000 clients in Valencia had no electricity.
Emergency services in the region urged citizens to avoid all road travel and to follow further official advice.

There was also flooding in other parts of the country, including the southern region of Andalusia, and forecasters warned of more bad weather ahead as the storm moved in a northeasterly direction.
“(The floodwaters) took away lots of dogs, lots of horses, they took away everything,” said Antonio Carmona, a construction worker and resident of Alora in Andalusia.

Spain is the world’s largest exporter of fresh and dried oranges, according to trade data provider the Observatory of Economic Complexity, and Valencia accounts for about 60% of the country’s citrus production, according to Valencian Institute of Agriculture Investigations
The death toll, which includes three people in other regions, appeared to be the worst in Europe from flooding since 2021 when at least 185 people died in Germany. It is possibly Spain’s worst in its modern history as the number of victims surpassed 87 people killed in a 1996 flood near the town of Biescas in the Pyrenees mountains.
In 1957, dozens of people died in floods in the city of Valencia which led to the construction of a new course of the

Source: Reuters.com

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