Shocking footage has emerged from Spain showing how parts of Valencia became completely engulfed by deadly flash floods that appeared from nowhere.
Torrents of water can be seen tearing through towns and infrastructure, sweeping cars down roads, submerging fields under mud and trapping people in their basements and cars.
At least 217 people have been killed in floods that have ravaged parts of the country this week. It is already Europe’s worst flood-related disaster since 1967 when at least 500 people died in Portugal. The Spanish government has now vowed to ‘improve’ recovery efforts with the deployment of 10,000 soldiers and police officers.
Authorities in hard-hit Valencia said on Sunday that hopes of finding more survivors are fading after the catastrophic floods wrecked homes and vehicles, leaving locals stranded without power and vital supplies.
There was no let up in the storms today as heavy downpours caused flooding in Barcelona, with Spain’s weather service issuing a red alert for ‘continuous and torrential rains’ along the coast and telling people to stay alert and not travel ‘unless strictly necessary’.
Mobile phones sounded with an alert for ‘extreme and continued rainfall’ on the southern outskirts of the city, urging people to avoid any normally dry gorges or canals where they could fall victim to rising waters.
Roads across the region have been blocked by mudslides and high water, with motorists filmed driving through submerged streets as they desperately try to get home to safety.
At Barcelona’s El Prat airport, shocking videos have shown water streaming into the terminal building and pouring from the ceilings, with travellers seen taking their shoes off and wading through the departures hall.
British couple Terry and Don Turner, aged 74 and 78, who had not been seen since torrential rains hit the Valencia region on Tuesday, were confirmed to be among the dead today.
Their daughter Ruth O’Loughlin, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, said that her parents’ bodies had been found inside their car on Saturday.
Their deaths bring the number of Brits confirmed dead in the tragedy to three, with a 71-year-old man losing his life after being rescued from the floods in Malaga.
The British man was rescued by boat last Tuesday by firefighters after his partner alerted the authorities because he was having an apparent heart attack and suffering from hypothermia.
According to scientists, the storms had concentrated over the Margo and Turia river basins, and in the Poyo riverbed, produced large walls of water that overflowed riverbanks – catching locals off guard as they went about their day on Tuesday evening.
Spain’s national weather service said in the hard-hit Chiva area, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge ‘extraordinary’.
When authorities initially sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working, or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which quickly became death traps.
Locals have told media that warnings and alerts came ‘far too late’ as many people were already trapped in the rising flood waters.
Survivors who have lost everything in the disaster have expressed their anger at authorities, who they say failed to warn them in time and were slow in their response.
That fury was directed at Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia yesterday as they visited Paiporta, one of the hardest-hit towns in Valencia.
The tension was palpable as the royals stepped out of their vehicles to walk through the streets flanked by bodyguards, with protesters slinging mud and objects towards the royals.
The crowd shouted ‘murderers’ and other insults at the royals and government officials, including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had to be evacuated and had his car windows smashed by furious protesters.
Spain’s AEMET weather centre in Valencia warned of heavy rainfall at 7:30am on Tuesday, raising the alert level to red in some areas and warning residents to stay off the roads in case of flooding.
But by 10:30am, firefighters were scrambling to rescue people in the floods that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Footage has captured people scrambling to escape their homes on foot or in their cars, before being swept away in the currents of muddy flood water as they cling on to rails and lamp posts.
AEMET warned residents to remain vigilant, even if there was little rainfall in their areas, as ravines and gullies were quickly filling with water pouring down from the mountains towards the sea.
At noon, Valencia’s president, Carlos Mazon, seemed to downplay the crisis by saying the storm was subsiding, contradicting the warnings of emergency services, and just five hours later, the city’s emergency services were swarmed with hundreds of pleas for help.
It was at 8pm that mobile phones finally went off with the public alert telling residents to stay indoors, but it was too little too late as people were already dealing with the crushing floods.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, extreme weather events causing highly impactful floods and droughts have become more likely and more severe due to climate change.
‘As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall,’ World Meteorological Organisation Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said.
The catastrophic downpours were fuelled by a destructive weather system which sees cold and warm air clash and produce powerful rain clouds, experts said.
Streets in Valencia rapidly became rivers due to the weather phenomenon, which scientists say are growing more frequent thanks to climate change.
It is known locally as DANA, a Spanish acronym for high-altitude isolated depression, and unlike common storms or squalls it can form independently of polar or subtropical jet streams.
When cold air blows over warm Mediterranean waters it causes hotter air to rise quickly and form towering, dense, water-laden clouds that can remain over the same area for many hours, raising their destructive potential.
The event sometimes provokes large hail storms and tornadoes, as seen this week, meteorologists say.
Eastern and Southern Spain are particularly susceptible to the phenomenon due to its position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Warm, humid air masses and cold fronts meet in a region where mountains favour the formation of storm clouds and rainfall.
This week’s DANA was one of the three most intense such storms in the last century in the Valencia region, Ruben del Campo, spokesperson for the national weather agency Aemet, said.
‘Forecasts were in line with what happened. But in an area between Utiel and Chiva, in the province of Valencia, rainfall exceeded 300 litres per square meter. In that area, storm systems formed and regenerated continuously,’ he explained.
Another factor that scientists say may have contributed to the freak weather, is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea
It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47C, said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.
The high temperature increases the capacity to create water vapour, which results in more intense rain.
Six days later, the waters have receded, but recovering from the destruction is set to takes weeks and months.
Valencia’s highways remain blocked or only partially usable with many covered in washed-up and destroyed vehicles.
Train tracks have been left so badly damaged that service is not likely to resume for weeks, according to Adif, Spain’s rail authority.
