| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 10:44 - Oct 31 with 874 views | BarcaBlue |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 10:23 - Oct 31 by DJR |
The following from the Guardian echoes what you say.
As Spain grappled with the fallout of the disaster, questions were being asked over why it had taken until after 8pm for the civil protection service to issue an alert urging residents not to leave home.
The national weather agency, Aemet, launched a red alert for the Valencia region on Tuesday morning and conditions deteriorated throughout the day. But it was only in the early evening that the regional body in charge of coordinating the emergency services was set up.
For many, it was already too late. The alert came as some were already trapped on roads and left at the mercy of raging torrents of water.
“They raised the alarm when the water was already here, there’s no need to tell me the flood is coming,”said Julian Ormeno, a 66-year-old in the Valencia city suburb of Sedavi.
“Nobody came to take responsibility,” he told AFP.
Another man told news site Eldiario.es that he had been trapped in his car with water up to his chest when the alert arrived. “Just after 8pm, when I had already spent an hour in water up to my neck and swallowing mud, the alert from the civil protection service sounded,” he said.
With weather forecasters issuing warnings beforehand, such tragedies are “entirely avoidable” if people can be kept away from surging flood water, said Hannah Cloke, hydrology professor at the University of Reading.
The devastating outcome suggests Valencia’s warning system failed, she said. “People just don’t know what to do when faced with a flood, or when they hear warnings.”
“People shouldn’t be dying from these kinds of forecasted weather events in countries where they have the resources to do better,” added Liz Stephens, a professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading in the UK. |
The last paragraph is spot on, there's no way so many people would have lost their life if the authorities had responded responsibly. This was obvious last night when the flooding was still happening but even more apparent today when the timetable of communications has become clearer. It's not a question of hindsight either, failings were obvious in real time.
The penultimate paragraph is nonsense. People do in generally know what to do when warned of flooding, they've lived through it before to different degrees. What happened here is that the alert was sent when people were up to their necks spitting mud or tragically not received as it was too late for those who had already been swept away. |  | |  |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 11:25 - Oct 31 with 840 views | DJR |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 11:54 - Oct 30 by ElephantintheRoom |
The worst floods since 1996 - long before global warming was reinvented as climate change
It’s almost as though extremes in weather happen from time to time. - and are more severe in countries where seasonal weather seems a bit severe to those living in more temperate countries |
You are not comparing like with like (except when it comes to casualties).
The 1996 flooding killed people in a campsite by a river, whereas the recent gota fria was far more intense and widespread. |  | | |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 11:51 - Oct 31 with 809 views | DJR |
AEMET has a red alert today for Castellon, and is predicting 180mm of rain today. [Post edited 31 Oct 2024 11:52]
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| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 10:15 - Nov 1 with 683 views | DJR |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 11:20 - Oct 30 by DJR |
Absolutely shocking with 51 deaths so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/30/spain-floods-torrential-rain-death
It's supposed to the due to a thing known as the gota fria (or cold drop) but this normally happens in September, so very late this year.
As it is, I know the southern end of the Valencia region, and it is undoubtedly the case that extreme temperatures have risen in recent years, and periods of drought have extended, so severe storms are probably all tied up with this. [Post edited 30 Oct 2024 11:27]
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It was mentioned on the World Service last night that there has never been a gota fria like this so late in the autumn.
And reading today's Informacion, the Spanish daily newpaper for the Costa Blanca, it was sad to note that the Valencia Fair building has been converted into a gigantic morgue with room for an expected 300-400 bodies, once they have all been found. [Post edited 1 Nov 2024 10:15]
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| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 09:36 - Nov 5 with 500 views | DJR |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 16:35 - Oct 30 by DJR |
I arrived in the southern part of the Costa Blanca in September 2019 a couple of days after what was described in El Pais as the worst storm to hit eastern Spain for 140 years.
https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/09/16/inenglish/1568618372_639259.html
https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/09/17/inenglish/1568707899_683506.html
Fortunately, the area is fairly flat so there was not a great deal of loss of life, but the Segura river, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, ended up as a lagoon stretching for miles in all directions, which brought out the mosquitoes. And the city of Orihuela was cut off for four days.
To have another, even more devastating gota fria so soon after does suggest there is something going on with the climate. [Post edited 30 Oct 2024 16:40]
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As a follow up to this, I came across this on Wikipedia which just goes to show how short-sighted right wing cost-cutting is.
In September 2019, floods killed six people in Vega Baja del Segura. To respond to future floods, the Socialist Valencian government of Ximo Puig established the Valencian Emergencies Unit (Valencian: Unitat Valenciana d'Emergències; Spanish: Unidad Valenciana de Emergencias). After the 2023 Valencian regional election, the Partido Popular government of Carlos Mazón shut down the unit, which it considered a "superfluous expense". [Post edited 5 Nov 2024 9:39]
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| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 12:03 - Nov 5 with 426 views | BarcaBlue |
| Devastating floods in Valencia yesterday on 09:36 - Nov 5 by DJR |
As a follow up to this, I came across this on Wikipedia which just goes to show how short-sighted right wing cost-cutting is.
In September 2019, floods killed six people in Vega Baja del Segura. To respond to future floods, the Socialist Valencian government of Ximo Puig established the Valencian Emergencies Unit (Valencian: Unitat Valenciana d'Emergències; Spanish: Unidad Valenciana de Emergencias). After the 2023 Valencian regional election, the Partido Popular government of Carlos Mazón shut down the unit, which it considered a "superfluous expense". [Post edited 5 Nov 2024 9:39]
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Indeed. Mazón is currently blaming everyone, he'll have to resign but I get the feeling he's the type to cling on as long as possible. Criminal charges will eventually he brought against him and his administration. | | | |
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