Latest news Search for missing persons continues after flood drama in Spain
Less than a week after the so-called storm of the century in eastern Spain, which claimed more than 200 lives, the search for missing persons in the disaster area continues.
04.11.2024, 12:54
SDA
Most recently, all eyes have been on a shopping center in Aldaia, a suburb of the provincial capital Valencia. Water is being pumped out of the underground parking lot with 2,700 parking spaces. It is feared that bodies could be discovered there and in other underground car parks.
"The emergency services have already searched around 20 vehicles, but no bodies have been found," said Aldaia mayor Guillermo Luján on state TV station RTVE. Luján put the dramatizing reports in some media into perspective. "The parking lot was almost empty, we estimate that there were less than 100 vehicles parked there at the time of the flooding." We have to be careful, he said, as exaggerated reports are circulating.
Warnings against speculation
The official death toll stands at 217 - 213 in the province of Valencia alone, which is popular with holidaymakers. In addition, many people are still missing - there is still no official figure. A few media outlets have been writing for days about 1,500, 2,000 or even 2,500 missing people. However, there are no sources for these figures. They are presumably based on emergency calls, some of which were received by the authorities at the beginning of the storm. "We must not speculate", said the Minister for Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, on this topic. We must proceed seriously.
In the meantime, however, it is not only the remains of missing people that are being recovered. People who were thought to be missing are also turning up in many places. Most recently the pensioner Josefa, as police officer Iván García reported on RTVE on Monday. "The joy of the relatives and friends when they saw her again was huge, indescribable," said the officer. "She was at home the whole time, but we hadn't been able to contact her." There are also still "many people who are completely disoriented".
No more severe weather warnings in the disaster area
Meanwhile, the clean-up and recovery work was getting better and better. On Monday, around 10,000 police officers from the Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil were deployed alongside more than 7,500 military personnel. They were supported by the fire department and civil defense as well as countless volunteers. It is assumed that the clean-up work will take many days and even weeks. Reconstruction is likely to take months.
In Valencia, there was as much rain in a few hours on Tuesday in some places as there usually is in a year. There should be no more significant rainfall in the disaster area on Monday. Severe weather warnings were issued by the Aemet weather service for parts of Catalonia in the north-east and Extremadura in the west of the country.
