STORY: :: Valencia, Spain
Rescue teams searched for the missing in Spain on Thursday after scores of people were killed in the country’s worst flood-related disaster in modern history.
A Spanish government minister said dozens and dozens of people were still unaccounted for after a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours in parts of the Valencia region on Tuesday.
In the town of Paiporta, the epicenter of the disaster, people walked through mangled cars and debris…
as residents tried to clear the streets.
Isabel Seradilla says she was lucky to survive.
“The water was already up to here, to the neck,” she said. “If it wasn’t for my neighbours, I wouldn’t be telling this story.”
In Valencia, this resident says warnings came too late and that deaths could have been avoided.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged people in flooded areas to stay at home due to the threat of more stormy weather.
He said the government will keep providing resources to search for missing people as long as necessary.
Opposition politicians accused the central government of acting too slowly to warn residents and send in rescue teams.
That prompted the Interior Ministry to say regional authorities were responsible for civil protection measures.
Spain’s transport minister said about 50 miles of roads the eastern region region were seriously damaged or impassable – some blocked by cars containing dead bodies.
Research group Climate Central said in a report on Thursday that a low-pressure system behind Spain’s floods had tapped into an “atmospheric river” carrying excess moisture from the unusually warm Tropical Atlantic.
Meteorologists say human-driven climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and destructive.
