Heavy rainfall lasting 8 hours, equivalent to a year’s worth of precipitation, has resulted in over 200 fatalities.
Spain is observing three days of mourning, with flags at half-mast, after flooding claimed the lives of at least 205 people in the worst natural disaster the country has experienced in recent history. Scientists indicate that climate change is the reason for such extreme storms and flooding.
However, as rescue teams continue to search through mud-filled homes and rain persists, urgent questions have arisen regarding whether communication failures contributed to the death toll.
“There was enough time to warn people,” Jorge Alcina, director of the Meteorological Observatory at the University of Alicante, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Weather alerts did not reach the public effectively and in a timely manner.”
Devastation after the disaster.
Residents of the heavily impacted town of Paiporta told The Post that people were playing soccer, walking the streets, and continuing their normal lives on Tuesday (October 29), unaware that floodwaters were about to overflow with such force that it could destroy a bridge and stack cars on top of each other.
Miguel Ángel, a resident of the Valencia area, recounted receiving a message requesting people to shelter in place only after floodwaters had already submerged his vehicle.
“Around 8 a.m., after I had been in neck-deep water for an hour and swallowing mud, I finally heard the alert from the civil protection agency,” he told elDiario.es.
The incident of flooding in Valencia highlights the importance and challenges of communicating guidelines to help citizens cope with severe weather conditions beyond anything they have ever experienced.
In Spain, an emergency system is designed to directly inform the public about severe weather threats through mobile alerts. This system was first used in Madrid last year and was quickly ridiculed after storms turned out to be less severe than anticipated.
The death toll may continue to rise.
This week, critics of the government’s response have questioned why residents were not advised to stay indoors sooner, and why it took 12 hours from the issuance of a red alert by the Spanish Meteorological Agency for local officials to contact the public.
The first orange alert from the state weather agency was issued around noon on Monday (October 28), warning residents in the Valencia area to prepare for a serious event.
By Tuesday morning (October 29), heavy rainfall had begun to trigger flash floods in the region. The weather agency issued a red alert – the country’s highest level of weather threat – at 7:36 a.m.
By the time the SMS alert was sent, an area populated by hundreds of thousands of residents was facing life-threatening conditions as rapid flash floods turned streets into rivers, submerging villages and forcing people to seek refuge on rooftops.
Isabelle Anguelovski, director of the Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development Laboratory in Barcelona, stated: “Although the floods were very serious and came quickly, what was unhelpful was that the Valencia authorities did not warn until 8:12 p.m. that the situation had become critical and people should stay indoors.”
“At that point, you were either stuck in your car or on the road… [and] you weren’t checking your Twitter (X) account all the time.”
