The death toll from the Spanish floods reaches 205, as shock turns to anger and frustration

The death toll from historic flash floods in Spain rose to at least 205 people on Friday, with many more people still missing. The initial shock gave way to anger, frustration and a wave of solidarity.

Spanish emergency authorities said 202 of the victims were in the Valencia region alone, and officials warned that more rain was expected in the coming days.

The damage caused by the storm on Tuesday and Wednesday is reminiscent of the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors picking up the pieces as they mourn loved ones lost in Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory. Many streets were 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.

“The situation is unbelievable. It is a disaster and there is very little help,” said Emilio Cuartero, a resident of Masanasa, on the outskirts of Valencia. “We need machines and cranes to reach the locations. We need a lot of help. And bread and water.”

In Chiva, residents were busy clearing debris from muddy streets on Friday. The Valencian city received more rain in eight hours on Tuesday than in the previous 20 months, and water poured over a gully that crosses the city, destroying roads and walls of houses.

The mayor, Amparo Fort, told RNE radio that “entire houses have disappeared, we don’t know if there were people inside or not.

So far, 205 bodies have been recovered: 202 in Valencia, two in the Castilla La Mancha region and another in Andalusia. 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.

“I’ve been there all my life, all my memories are there, my parents lived there … and now in one night it’s all gone,” Chiva resident Juan Vicente Pérez told The Associated Press near where he lost his house. “If we had waited five more minutes, we wouldn’t be here in this world.”

Before-and-after satellite images of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the catastrophe, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape awash in muddy water. The V-33 highway was completely covered with the brown of a thick layer of mud.

The tragedy has unleashed a wave of local solidarity. Residents of communities like Paiporta – where at least 62 people have died – and Catarroja have walked miles in sticky mud to Valencia to get supplies, passing neighbors from unaffected areas who brought water, essential products and shovels or brooms to help remove the mud. The number of people coming to help is so high that authorities have asked them not to drive there because they block the roads that emergency services need.

In addition to the contributions of volunteers, associations such as the Red Cross and municipal councils distribute food.

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. The storm shut off electricity and water services Tuesday evening, but by Friday about 85% of the 155,000 affected customers had their power restored, the utility said in a statement.

“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.”

Juan Ramón Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, 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. Some shops have been looted and authorities have arrested fifty people.

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. Others organized collections of basic goods or launched fundraising campaigns across the country.

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 this 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 made up of dozens of international scientists who study the role of global warming. study 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.