The torrential rains and river flooding caused by the Isolated High Level Depression (DANA) that has flooded a good part of the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia has already become the biggest catastrophe so far this century in this area.
A tragedy that has so far ended with almost 100 dead and dozens missingfigures that could increase since The work of the emergency services continues against the clock in the middle of the mud. The most devastated area has been lThe municipalities located in the south of the metropolitan area of Valenciaan area with nearly 400,000 inhabitants, along with other towns in the province such as Utiel. The number of deaths in the Valencian Community reaches 92 people.
To them we must add two deaths in Castilla-La Manchain Albacete, specifically in Letur, -where there are also five missing people- and another in Mira (Cuenca). Also in Malaga one death has been recorded.
The water has caused dramatic situations in these three autonomies, in addition to significant communication problems due to cuts to roads and railway lines. A human and economic tragedy that has caused three days of official mourning to be declared throughout Spain and different administrations and groups to demand the declaration of catastrophic areas in the regions most affected by this meteorological phenomenon, which is still active. Now In Andalusia the red alert has moved to the province of Cádiz and the Sevillian countryside, and threatens Aragon and Catalonia.
Chaos and power outages
In the case of the province of Valencia, heavy rainfall throughout the day on Tuesday seriously hit the main roads and railway infrastructure. But the real wave of destruction would arrive during the afternoon and night, with the overflowing of the Magro River in Utiel, in the interior of Valencia, where six people died. The flooding effect on the banks and ravines moved the floods towards the downstream coastline as the afternoon wore on.to the area where the ramblas that end in La Albufera are located, south of the Valencian capital.
In the urban centers of towns such as Paiporta, where it is estimated that half of the deceased have been located, Picanya or Catarroja, the streets were flooded and turned into mousetraps with dozens of vehicles adrift. A collapse and chaos to which power and telecommunications outageswhich also made the work of the emergency teams difficult, including the thousand soldiers from the Military Emergency Unit (UME) who mobilized this Wednesday.
To give an idea of the magnitude of the disaster and the panic unleashed, The emergency telephone number 112 received more than 30,000 callswhich caused long waits to be able to contact that service.
The Civil Guard, among whose troops there have been two casualties due to the catastrophe in Valencia, he managed to carry out more than 2,500 rescues yesterday and late in the afternoon I calculated that There were around 1,200 people still trapped between the A3 and A7 at different points, so come 5,000 vehicles that remain blocked.
Throughout yesterday, the accesses to several of these municipalities were still closed, as were several of the major communication routes in Valencia, such as the V-30, one of the main ring roads that also gives access to the port to the largest port in Valencia. containers from Spain. Throughout the day, several Army trucks were picking up people who had been blocked on that road.
Communications between the capital of Valencia and the southern towns through the bridges that cross the new Turia channel were closed and reserved for the exclusive use of firefighters, police, health workers and rescue teams. Precisely this infrastructure, built after the 1957 flood to divert the river from the city center, registered up to 2,000 cubic meters per second, after rains of between 300 and 400 liters per square meter accumulated along the Turia, according to the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation.
Precedents that fall short
These volumes of precipitation led the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) to consider DANA as the worst phenomenon of this type in the province of Valencia this century and would be on par with the two major storms at the end of the last century, October of 1982 that caused the Tous swamp, and that of November 1987. In municipalities like Pedralba the water levels exceeded those of the historic Turia flood of 1957 that flooded the capital.
The extent of the destruction makes it still very difficult to make an economic assessment of the damage and even set deadlines for a certain normality to be recovered in many areas. Which It is already clear that this DANA will dwarf the more than 1.3 billion euros in which the similar phenomenon was encrypted hit the Vega Baja of Alicante in 2019.
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