Heavy rain, now described as the worst in three decades, hit the Spanish region of Valencia on Tuesday flooding roads and towns and killing at least 62 people local authorities reported on Wednesday.
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Emergency services and volunteers in dinghies searched for people in the waters and saved several, TV footage from the town of Utiel showed. More rescuers were trying to reach the most affected regions.
“To those people who, at this moment, continue searching for their relatives, Spain cries with you,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a TV address. “To the villages and cities destroyed by this tragedy, I say the same: Together, we will bring back your streets, your squares, your bridges,” he said.
The head of the regional delegation in Valencia, one of Spain’s largest agricultural areas, Carlos Mazon, said that some individuals still refused to leave their hideouts in the mountains.
“If they have not arrived, does this mean they have not given us the means, the predisposition? In no case, the problem has been the access … there are inaccessible areas, which are impossible to reach,” Mazon said at a press conference.
Nearly a dozen videos uploaded on social media last night suggested that people were caught in flood waters, some having climbed trees to doodriven. There were scenes of rescuers moving several women in the bucket of a bulldozer.
Firemen could be seen rescuing people whose cars had been trapped in the flooded roads in the town of Alzira.
It announced the suspension of train services to the cities of Madrid and Barcelona due to the flooding, while schools and other facilities of public utility in the flood-affected areas were closed down the officials said.
Deadliest Spanish floods since 1996
According to the last reports, the number of victims from the flood looked like the highest death toll in Europe for the flood since 2021, when 185 people died in Germany. It is the worst flood-related disaster in Spain since 1996 when 87 people perished near a town of Pyrenees mountains.
Leading researchers opine that climate change is the reason extreme weather events are on the rise in Europe. Scientists believe the enhanced warming of the Mediterranean Sea which results in evaporation enhances the torrential rains.
“Such events, which until recently occurred several decades ago, are now occurring more often and their destructive potential is much higher,” said Ernesto Rodriguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association.
Local authorities and agencies involved in emergency services in the part of the country in question asked people to stay off the roads and follow more instructions to be expected, and a military unit involved in rescue operations in some places assisted local response teams.
Spain state weather agency AEMET warned of a red alert yesterday on Valencia, the biggest citrus-producing province with some parts including Turis and Utiel receiving 200mm of rainfall.
The regional government said it has stopped raining while it said Castellon in the north of the region would remain on Orange alert until 2 pm. On Tuesday, ASAJA, one of Spain’s largest farmers’ organizations, warned that it foresaw substantial crop losses.
Data from the trade data provider Observed ID shows that Spain is the largest exporter of fresh and dried oranges And data from the Valencian Institute of Agriculture Investigations, the province of Valencia contributes about sixty percent of the citrus production in Spain.
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