Spanish residents appeal for help 3 days after historic floods kill at least 158

MADRID (AP) — Three days later historical flash floods sweeping through several cities in the south of Valencia, in eastern Spain, the initial shock on Friday gave way to anger, frustration and a wave of solidarity.

Many streets are still closed vehicles and garbagein some cases trapping residents in their homes. In some places, there is still no electricity, water or stable telephone connection.

Residents appealed to the media for help.

“This is a disaster. There are many elderly people who do not have medicine. There are children who do not have food. We have no milk, no water. We don’t have access to anything,” a resident of Alfafar, one of the worst-hit towns in southern Valencia, told state-run TVE. “No one even came to warn us on the first day.”

So far, 158 bodies have been found – 155 in Valencia, two in the Castilla-La Mancha region and one in Andalusia – after Spain’s worst natural disaster. Security forces and soldiers are busy search for an unknown number of people missing, many feared to be trapped in wrecked cars or flooded garages.

And as authorities have said time and time again, more storms are expected. The Spanish Meteorological Agency has warned of heavy rain in Tarragona, Catalonia, as well as parts of the Balearic Islands.

Meanwhile, flood survivors and volunteers are doing a titanic job of cleaning up the ubiquitous layer of thick silt.

Residents of towns like Paiporta, where at least 62 people died, and Catarrajo walked kilometers (miles) to Valencia for supplies, passing neighbors from unaffected areas who brought water, essentials or shovels to help clear the mud.

Juan Ramon Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, one of the hardest-hit towns, said aid was not enough for residents in an “extreme situation”.

“People live with corpses at home. It is very sad. We organize ourselves, but we run out,” he told reporters. “We go in vans to Valencia, buy and come back, but here we are completely forgotten.”

Stormy water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, leaving many uninhabitable.

Social networks drew attention to the needs of the victims. Some posted images of missing people in the hope of getting information about their whereabouts, while others launched initiatives such as Suport Mutu — or Mutual Support — which connects requests for help with people who offer it; and others organized collections of essential goods across the country or launched fundraisers.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the worst flash flood in recent memory. Scientists link this to climate change, which is also the cause of increasingly high temperatures and drought in Spain and other countries heating of the Mediterranean Sea.

Human-induced climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like this week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a partial analysis released Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a group of dozens of international scientists studying the role of global warming in extreme weather. .

Spain suffered from a nearly two-year drought, which made the flooding worse because the dry ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain.

In August 1996, a flood swept away a campsite along the Gallego River in Biescas in the northeast, killing 87 people.