The south of Spain experienced some horrendous flooding Tuesday and Wednesday. Some of the photos and stories are very sad – the water was so strong that anything in front of it just didn’t stand a chance.
Bridges, roads, houses and people were washed away.
The storm has moved now, and I believe that Extremadura now has an orange weather alert – however I think the storm in Valencia was just off the charts when it comes to weather warnings. A year’s worth of rain falling in 8 hours. It’s hard to imagine.
We know how heavy the rain was in Extremadura, but the rain in Valencia was so much more. While we never had real flooding, in Fuente De Cantos (where the bus station was), they had flooding that washed cars down the roads.
When mum and dad first visited we had ‘proper’ Extremadura rain and mum and dad went out for a walk and came back saying the river was running fast. This surprised us, as we didn’t think we had a river (we’d only been there a short time so were still finding our way around). However, it wasn’t a river, it was the storm drain. So I think of that – but so much greater in magnitude.
I remember with dread watching as the water level in our patio used to rise and then the sinking feeling as the water started to come in and we knew it would go to every room. And that was clean water – and we’d be all dry in a couple of hours. I just can’t imagine what it would have been like to have what people are describing as a tsunami coming through the streets. People just didn’t have time to get away.
The photo gallery on the newspaper El Pais’s website shows some of the devistation in the region:
https://elpais.com/espana/2024-10-29/la-dana-en-espana-en-imagenes.html