What you need to know about unprecedented floods that have killed more than 200 people in Spain

MADRID – In a matter of minutes, flooding caused by heavy rainfall in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in its path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were destroyed.

Four days later, authorities found 213 bodies – most of them in eastern Valencia. They continued searching Saturday for an unknown number of missing people.

Thousands of volunteers helped clear thick layers of mud and debris that still covered homes, streets and roads despite power and water outages and shortages of some essential goods. Some of the vehicles that had been tossed together by the water or crashed into buildings still had bodies inside them, awaiting identification.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

What’s happened?

The storms centered over the Magro and Turia river basins and created waves of water in the Poio River bed that overflowed the river’s banks, catching people by surprise as they continued to go about their daily lives Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

In an instant, muddy water covered roads, railways and entered homes and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia. Drivers had to take shelter on the roofs of cars, and residents on high ground.

Spain’s National Meteorological Service said the worst-hit region of Chiva received more rain in eight hours than in the previous 20 months, calling the flooding “extreme.”

When authorities sent out cellphone alerts warning of the severity of the flooding and asking people to stay home, many were already on the road, working or drenched in low-lying areas or underground garages that had become death traps.

Why did these massive floods happen?

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two possible links to human-caused climate change. First, warmer air traps and then releases more rain. Another possibility is possible changes in the jet stream—the river of air over land that moves weather systems around the globe—that give rise to extreme weather conditions.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding was a cut-off, lower-pressure storm system that resulted from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. This system simply stalled over the region and dumped rain. Meteorologists say this happens so often that in Spain they are called DANA, the Spanish acronym for the system.

And here there is an unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. Mid-August had the highest surface temperature on record at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Center for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University London.

The extreme weather event comes as Spain battled prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say drought and flood cycles are increasing as the climate changes.

Has this happened before?

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is accustomed to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the worst flash flooding in recent memory.

Elderly people in Pyeport, at the epicenter of the tragedy, said Tuesday’s floods were three times worse than in 1957, killing at least 81 people. This episode led to a change in the course of the Turia River, meaning that most of the city was spared these floods.

Valencia experienced two more major DANAs in the 1980s: one in 1982 that killed around 30 people, and another five years later that broke rainfall records.

Flash floods also surpassed the flood that swept away a camp along the Gallego River at Biescas in the northeast, killing 87 people in August 1996.

What was the state’s reaction?

Management of the crisis, which the Valencian government classifies as level two on a three-point scale, is in the hands of regional authorities, who can turn to the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

At the request of Valencian President Carlos Mason of the conservative People’s Party, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Saturday the deployment of 5,000 more soldiers to join rescue efforts, clearing rubble and providing water and food.

The government will also send 5,000 more national police officers to the region, Sanchez said.

There are currently around 2,000 soldiers of the Military Emergency Unit, the army’s first unit to respond to natural disasters and humanitarian crises, as well as almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes, who have rescued 4,500 people, and 1,800 national police officers currently involved in the emergency response. officers.

When many of the victims said they felt abandoned by authorities, a wave of volunteers arrived to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic food supplies, hundreds of people walked several kilometers to deliver supplies and help clean up the hardest-hit areas.

On Tuesday, Sanchez’s government is expected to approve a disaster declaration that would provide quick access to financial aid. Mason announced additional economic assistance.

Valencia’s regional government has been criticized for not sending out flood warnings to mobile phones until 8pm on Tuesday, when flooding had already begun in some places, and well after the national meteorological agency had issued a red warning indicating heavy rainfall .

Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.