At least 51 people have died in floods caused by torrential rains in Spain’s eastern Valencia region, rescue teams said on Wednesday, as authorities struggled to deal with the rare disaster.
Heavy rain and strong winds have been lashing southern and eastern Spain since the beginning of the week, causing flooding in Valencia and the southern Andalusia region.
“The provisional number of dead is 51 people,” regional emergency services wrote on Twitter, adding that bodies were still being recovered and identified.
According to José Miguel Basset, the region’s fire service chief, “several hundred people” were stranded on two motorways in the region.
Regional head Carlos Mazon told reporters there was no electricity in parts of the Valencia region, phone lines were down and roads were cut off in some places due to flooding.
An AFP journalist saw cars scattered and piled on top of each other on roads near the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia after a landslide.
Residents tried to clear mud from their homes with buckets and waded into waist-deep water in an attempt to save their belongings.
Maria Carmen, a resident of the city of Valencia, told Spanish public broadcaster TVE that she climbed out of her car window and hid for hours on the roof of a van to escape the floodwaters.
King Felipe VI said he was “devastated” by the news on Christmas and expressed “our heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims, thanking the emergency services for their “titanic” response.
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro of neighboring Portugal expressed his country’s “greatest regret” and “solidarity with all the Spanish people” in a message on Friday, and offered “all necessary help”.
‘Unprecedented Event’
Pilar Bernabé, the central government representative in the Valencia region, said emergency military response units were being sent from several regions to reinforce the rescue effort.
Defense Minister Margarita Robles told reporters that “more than a thousand troops” supported by helicopters were being deployed in the face of an “unprecedented incident”.
Emergency services in the Valencia area rescued about 200 people overnight, who were sheltered in fire shelters, Bassett said.
Footage showed torrents of water flooding roads on Tuesday, sweeping away cars, while rail and air transport was severely disrupted.
The Spanish Parliament observed a minute of silence on Wednesday in honor of the victims before a typically tumultuous session of questions to the government.
The flooding is the deadliest in Spain since August 1996, when 86 people died in the northeastern region of Aragon near the Pyrenees mountains bordering France.
Meteorologists said the storm was caused by cold air moving over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, producing intense rain clouds.
The rain is expected to continue until at least Thursday.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather such as heat waves and hurricanes are becoming more intense as a result of human-induced climate change.
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