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More than 60 people have died in southern and eastern Spain as towns were submerged and road and rail links severed in the most devastating flash floods to hit Europe for several years.
Local authorities said at least 62 people had died in the Valencia region after torrential rains hit the area on Tuesday, with officials warning that the death toll was likely to rise and extend to neighbouring regions.
“These are very difficult hours for relatives and for the disappeared,” said Carlos Mazón, president of the Valencia government, on Wednesday. “Right now it’s impossible to offer a precise figure [on the number of victims]. We’re in shock.”
The central government said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would chair a crisis meeting on the floods at midday in Madrid. “We cannot yet say that this disastrous episode is over,” Sánchez said in a televised address.
The death toll was expected to be the worst caused by flooding in Europe since 2021, when unprecedented rain took the lives of more than 200 people in Germany and Belgium.
Videos on social media in Spain showed people clinging to trees to avoid being swept away, firefighters rescuing drivers trapped in cars and other vehicles being consumed by muddy flood waters.
Mazón said some people remained stranded in areas that it was “absolutely impossible” to reach and others were without power and telephone communications.
Spain’s state weather agency Aemet said the storm was the most intense to hit Valencia since the 1980s. Chiva, a town 30km west of central Valencia, had a year’s worth of rainfall in just eight hours, the BBC reported.
High-speed trains connecting Valencia to Madrid and Barcelona were suspended and some flights due to land at Valencia airport were diverted to other cities. Schools and other public services in the worst-hit areas were closed.
Aemet described the intense rain as the result of a “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea and leads to the rapid formation of giant cumulonimbus rain clouds.
Ernesto Rodríguez Camino, a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association, said: “What we know is that in the context of climate change, these types of intense and exceptional, rare rainfall events are going to become more frequent and more intense and, therefore, destructive.”
