“It was the worst day of my life”

The Crisis Coordination Center announced the resumption of search and rescue operations in the flooded areas of the Valencian Community. Thousands of soldiers from the Military Rescue Unit, as well as officers of the Civil Guard, Fire Department and policemen are taking part in them. As reported, the greatest attention is currently focused on the province of Castellon, where about 88 liters of rain per square meter has fallen in recent hours.

The services operate mainly on the ground because – as the president of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, said on Wednesday evening – “there are no more people visible from the air who can be saved.” The number of missing people in the regions of Valencia, Castile-La Mancha and Andalusia is still unknown.

Due to extreme rainfall on Tuesday and Wednesday, south-eastern regions of Spain were hit by the worst flooding in 28 years. In some places, the annual rainfall fell in just a few hours.

Local authorities reported at least 95 deaths. As many as 92 fatalities were recorded in Valencia, two people died in the Castile-La Mancha region, and one, saved during the flood in Andalusia, died in hospital. Spain has been in three days of national mourning since Thursday.

Valencian authorities urged people to stay away from flooded or cut off roads, saying emergency services needed access to them. In some places, large-scale clean-up operations and damage assessment have begun. Many people still cannot believe the scale of the tragedy.

– It was the worst day of my life. We were trapped like rats. Cars and garbage containers flowed through the streets. The water rose to three meters, said the mayor of Utiel in Valencia, Ricardo Gabaldón, on Wednesday.

Local media describe that thousands of people still do not have access to electricity, and material losses are difficult to estimate at this point. Due to the damage, some of the railway infrastructure is also not working.

Violent storms and floods are the result of an atmospheric phenomenon known in Spain as DANA (Spanish: depresion aislada en niveles altos). It forms when cold air meets warm and moist air over the Mediterranean Sea, creating atmospheric instability and, consequently, extreme weather phenomena such as storms, tornadoes and floods.

Forecasts indicate that the element is weakening as it moves across the Iberian Peninsula. However, yellow and orange warnings issued by the national meteorological agency (AEMET) are still in force in the country. Level 2 alerts apply to regions on the east coast of Spain.