Málaga is in suspense regarding the development of DANA in the coming hours. After overcoming the first impact without personal injury, the atmosphere in the Andalusian Government was one of concern regarding the weather forecasts for the night. AEMET has updated the red notice until 8:00 on Friday and President Juan Manuel Moreno has canceled his presence at the Budget debate to travel to Malaga to coordinate the meeting of the emergency committee.
“The situation continues to be one of alert and extreme risk,” Antonio Sanz warned at the end of the meeting of the Operations Committee that is managing the response to the emergency, after eight in the afternoon. “The forecasts are still very high risk, to the point that the alert has been reconsidered. There are still great problems and complexities to face,” said the Presidential advisor, calling for caution: “There is a lot left. This is not over. It can rain in very wet conditions, so the situation is more alert than yesterday. “There is no time to drain.”
The risk has led the Andalusian Government to extend to Thursday the closure of classrooms already decreed for Wednesday in Malaga, the Genil basin, Granada and the coast of Granada. In addition, the centers in the municipalities of Cádiz, Huelva and Seville affected by the AEMET orange notice will be closed.
More than 1,000 incidents, but no personal injuries
Sanz has given a balance of more than 1,000 incidents, 760 of them in the province of Malaga. 4,210 people have been evicted in the province, the majority on the banks of the Guadalhorce and Campanillas, and about 950 in Almayate (Vélez-Málaga). But beyond the quantitative, in his words there was satisfaction for the qualitative: “The balance is that there has not been any incident of serious consequence either for the health or for the lives of people.”
Sanz has highlighted the coordination with the town councils and the central government agencies to overcome the situation. “The coordination with AEMET has been perfect.”
In this temporal balance weighs the early warning launched last night with all possible means (including Es-Alert, which sounded around 11:00 p.m. – twelve hours before the downpour – on the phones of 1,300,000 people), the suspension of classes at all educational levels, preventive evacuations and rapid relief of flooded areas. This is what happened with Avenida Andalucía, which went from being flooded with water and mud to being clear in just one hour. The situation in the morning was such that there was hardly anyone on the street. It reminded me of the days of confinement.
Juan Manuel Moreno, president of the Junta de Andalucía, assessed the measures taken at midday, marking a stark distance from the decisions adopted by the Generalitat Valenciana two weeks ago. “Today Malaga is paralyzed. I know that it is a problem for citizens not to take their children to class, but we act based on the AEMET rainfall information with a fundamental objective, which is to prevent rather than cure. We have already seen it in Valencia. Faced with the prospect of intense rains in a Mediterranean city with basins and mountains, as Malaga also has, we try to minimize the impact of DANA.”
“Thanks to the fact that many streets were practically lonely, the consequences have not gone any further,” Sanz pointed out at night.
Wednesday’s balance
This Wednesday, Malaga endured a tremendous downpour. As predicted, a huge thunderstorm hit the city in the middle of the day. The Guadalmedina, almost always dry, then grew up to a meter and a half in height and sloping central streets, such as Victoria or Carretería, became streams.
The graphic image was also left by Andalucía Avenue as it passed through El Corte Inglés, converted there into a raft that trapped buses and cars. For a few hours, the overflowing of the Campanillas River (to the west), as always when it rains like this, was taken for granted. And there were fears of the drowning of dozens of horses at the El Pinar equestrian club. There, the water fell with such force that the stables in the low areas were flooded and messages were circulated to open the doors with a radio in the face of the power cut. They managed to get them out in time.
The memory of the disastrous floods of 1989, which occurred on November 14, floated in the air. This November 13th it rained heavily but the city avoided disaster, at least in the afternoon, so everyone was feeling their clothes. We still had to wait for the streams in the eastern area to resist and face another downpour expected for the night, after reaching around 90 liters per square meter in 12 hours at the capital’s measuring stations. The storm forced all health centers to close, except emergency points.
In the province, the worst was suffered by Benamargosa, a small municipality in Axarquía (1,557 inhabitants), whose homonymous river overflowed in the afternoon, flooding houses, businesses and avocado and mango plantations, the major local industry. The river fell to a height of 4.30 meters, with a flow of 425,000 liters per second. An outrage that exceeded its historical maximum level by more than one meter. In 12 hours, the accumulated rain there was 132.5 liters per square meter, enough to exceed the red level. In Alfarnatejo, also in Axarquía, they exceeded 144. In Coín, in the Guadalhorce valley, they reached 119. And in Ojén or Marbella, to the west, they exceeded 80 and 60, respectively. It shows that intense rains affected almost the entire province.
A waterspout off the coast of Marbella caused an impact. The videos of the hallways and laboratory of the Clinical Hospital being flooded (something that is not the first time that has happened), of the water falling in a stream on the hams of the Corte Inglés and the rescue of a neighbor with water up to her knees also went viral. at a gas station in Héroe de Sostoa.
It was one of the images of the day that left the capital cut off by train. Renfe suspended the service of line C-1 that connects with Fuengirola and the Media Distancia service with Seville. The high speed service with Madrid was also canceled from 1:30 p.m. The María Zambrano station was evacuated in the lobby area and platforms. The A-7059 passing through Cártama, the A-7054 and A-7000 in Málaga, and the A-7207 between Cómpeta and Torrox were closed. The airport canceled fifteen flights and diverted another five to Seville.
I breathe in the middle of the afternoon
In the middle of the afternoon, the rain took a break and gave it to the people of Malaga. The Guadalmedina River flowed down with a good flow, a rarity that locals and strangers contemplated with amazement, but the sky opened and walkers stopped on the bridges to immortalize that the riverbed was no longer dry. The center was recovering its tourist flow, not a minute of the trip to lose, even though everything was bogged down.
At that time, Carretería was a muddy mess. It is ground zero of the havoc this Wednesday in the Center, and also of mass tourism in Malaga. Just a short time before, a tremendous flood of mud had come down Postigo de Arance Street until it ended in just a few dozen meters at the confluence with Carretería. Here there are premises of brunchtourist apartments, lockers franchises and laundries. “It has reached one meter, and suddenly. Luckily we were able to get out,” says Luigi in Caramelli Salato, while barely removing the mud.
Marcos Sneydr barely had time to lower the blinds of his premises when he found himself in arm-deep water. In minutes it reached just under a meter. As soon as they saw how quickly it was rising, they went home. A large flowerpot carried by the current and a 25-liter beer barrel stowed in a corner show the waves. They had customers, and they rushed them out. “It is a shame that Carretería is like this. They just did it and it should have drains. I understand that the rain has been tremendous, but… a river was flowing down there,” explains Ana López, the owner, pointing to Postigo de Arance, while her son Marcos bails out the mud that has entered.
A broken pipe also had a lot to do with it, which a crew of workers quickly accounted for. “Little has happened,” they say: “He blew it up. Keep in mind that a canal passes through there,” explains one of them, showing the stretch of cobblestones that the power of the flow has lifted from the ground.
In the middle of the afternoon, damage was being counted in the Center while eyes turned to the eastern area, where a handful of generally dry streams flow, and which with the rains discharge water from the mountains that surround the city.
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