(CN) — The death toll from catastrophic flooding in eastern Spain rose to more than 200 people on Friday as search and rescue crews continued to recover bodies from devastated towns and villages near Valencia.
The number of dead was expected to continue to rise with many people still missing; meanwhile, search and rescue crews were unable to access some of the worst-hit areas. Heavy rains continued to lash parts of Spain on Friday with bouts of rain in the forecast this weekend, threatening more damage and prompting new flood warnings.
Tuesday’s heavy rains were unprecedented in recent decades and left Spain stunned as the country reeled from the terrifying speed and ferocity of flash flooding triggered by a severe cold snap. Scientists said climate change played a big role in fueling the torrential rainfall.
Carolina Martí Llambrich, a coastal researcher at the University of Girona, said rains once again were striking the Valencia region on Friday. Western and coastal Andalusia and southern Catalonia also were under flood warnings.
By late Friday, the death toll stood at 205 with the number of missing people unknown. The worst damage took place in towns, suburbs and villages in the plains, hills and mountains surrounding Valencia, a major coastal city. Valencia and its province have long struggled with flooding, most often triggered by fierce Mediterranean-driven storms at this time of the year.
Pedro Arcos, the director of a disaster research unit at the University of Oviedo, said the death toll “is expected to rise in the coming days as bodies are recovered from the mud that has occupied garages and buried cars with passengers.”
Scores of videos on social media showed floodwaters raging down streets, sweeping away bridges and carrying away vehicles. Videos also depicted scenes when floodwaters first entered city streets, catching unsuspecting pedestrians and vehicles by surprise.
Friday was All Saints’ Day, a public holiday in Spain dedicated to commemorating the dead, and thousands of people from Valencia poured into the flood-hit areas to help with the cleanup and provide relief. Videos showed throngs of people, many of them carrying shovels, walking into the flood zones to help. So many people walked because roads remained blocked or closed in many places.
“We are witnessing the community uniting together; where people are coming out and helping each other,” said Rickkye Gan, a medical doctor with the University of Oviedo’s disaster unit, in a telephone interview.
Help also poured into Valencia from the rest of Spain with more than 1,000 Spanish soldiers mobilized to the region and scores of firefighters, emergency personnel and police sent there. Cleanup operations were underway to clear roadways and towns of vast amounts of mud, vehicles and debris.
The intense rainfall was triggered by a highly unpredictable weather phenomenon known as a “DANA,” the Spanish acronym for an “isolated depression at high levels.” Such storms take place in the autumn along the Spanish and French Mediterranean coasts, typically between September and October. In the past, they have caused severe flooding in eastern Spain.
“They were previously called ‘cold drops’ because they result from a pinch-off of the jet stream, isolated like a ‘drop,’” Martí Llambrich said. “This isolation leads to erratic movement, making prediction very challenging.”
This difficulty in predicting the ferocity of a DANA played a big part in this week’s disaster. Weather forecasts did not suggest such torrential rains would occur. Rainfall ranged between 11.8 inches and 19.7 inches and 6.2 inches fell in just one hour in places, amounts equal to what that part of Spain can get in a year.
“The severity of the phenomenon in Valencia was due to the exceptional nature of the event since storms typically form, act, and dissipate within 20-40 minutes,” Martí Llambrich said.
But on Tuesday, she said “a very compact and static cluster of storms formed” that turned into a self-regenerating single storm that lasted for six hours.
Although the severity of a DANA is hard to predict, authorities in Valencia were under scrutiny for hesitating to trigger a general alert to residents. An alert was sent out at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, well after floodwaters had begun to inundate some towns. Authorities also faced anger for a previous decision to scrap the province’s emergency unit.
“There is increasing evidence that the alert to the population was given too late,” Arcos said in an email.
He said the National Meteorological Agency issued an alert about the possibility of severe weather on Tuesday morning at 7:36 a.m. Twelve hours later, Valencia’s civil protection authorities sent text messages telling people to stay indoors because of the risk of flooding.
“We must analyze logistical shortcomings,” Martí Llambrich said.
Compared to other countries worldwide, Gan said Spain ranks high for its ability to respond to natural disasters, but he said it needs to reassess whether it is ready to handle disasters made worse by climate change.
“The real question is whether this preparedness is taking into account the scale of climate change that we are experiencing globally,” he said. “It is probably not doing that.”
Martí Llambrich said climate change is making DANA events both fiercer and more frequent.
The University of Oviedo disaster experts estimated this flood caused up to $3.2 billion in damages, likely making it the costliest DANA-related flood in Spain’s history. Floodwaters covered about 242 square miles, they said.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.