A different and depressing post this week after the huge storm that affected inland Valencia on Tuesday and brought disastrous flooding to a huge area to the south and west of the city. A storm front got stuck over the mountains to the south and west of the city and torrential rain fell for hours. Usually the rains of this type are limited in time as the storm moves but this was a chain of storms fed by the heating of the Mediterranean Sea making it longer, wetter and more deadly. Our thoughts, donations and help are with all of those affected.
(This post is going out on Friday rather than waiting for our usual posts on Mondays so as to get the information out there as soon as possible to those who may need it. We know that some people are desperate to help but don't know what to do)
Chiva saw 491 litres of rain in just eight hours (About 19 inches or 49cm) which is the equivalent of their annual rainfall in the area and of course therefore the Barrancos (Dry river beds) and fields were overwhelmed. In turn this leads to the rivers which are already full at the time and brings down trees, rubbish and even bins and washed away cars making the floods even more deadly. As I write this there are over 200 people confirmed dead and lots more missing still. That number will rise more over the next few days.
The area in red is the place that suffered the greatest flooding but upstream in areas such as Chiva, Villamarchante, Ribarroja and more there was a lot of destruction too including the loss of most of the bridges crossing the River Turia meaning they are incommunicado from the north. Having just talked with one of our clients in Villamarchante he tells me that the Lliria to Villamarchante bridge is still intact and the Villamarchante to Ribarroja bridge is passable with care although cracked (No Lorries). Therefore if you are needing to go towards Madrid then up to Lliria and take the CV50 to meet with the N3 motorway would seem to be the way to avoid most traffic and disruption in the next week or so (Currently there is no entry to Cheste on the CV50 so maybe not for a day or so).
In the image below you can see how many cubic metres of water passed through various areas. In Valencia it got to 2000m3 per second. Normally it's around 14m3/s. So just the small matter of 150 times more than it normally takes! That's how much it rained.
Equally two parts of the A7 and Torrente motorways have collapsed meaning through traffic on the Barcelona to Alicante motorway cannot pass. The carnage is so bad to the south and west of the city that traffic cannot get to the areas to help. As today is a holiday in Spain thousands of people are travelling down there from Valencia by foot and bicycle with spades and cleaning equipment to help out the thousands of people affected. Our local food bank is organising collections and people have donated vans to take the collected food and drinks to the affected area with the teams from the Red Cross and Protección Civil. There is truly nothing like Spanish solidarity when something bad happens here.
What Can You Do To Help?
If you are in the city and available then you can volunteer to help. But if you are not then here are the following ways to help out. We wrote this on our Facebook page yesterday.
"Thanks to all of you who have contacted me via messaging etc with questions about how you can help out after the devastating flooding of this week. Obviously if you are around Valencia there are some groups you can join to help in the clean up and some people with spare rooms have offered them but mostly families have been taken in by their extended family.
However if you want to donate then I spoke with my bank this morning and they have a fund set up to give money to the Spanish Red Cross who are the most reliable on the ground assistance usually.
The account number for donations is as follows:
Cruz Roja Española
ES92 0182 2370 4600 1002 2227
It's their account at the BBVA bank
For those of you who do Bizum their number for this BBVA account is 33467
(**It's been pointed out to me that foreign donations usually require the address of the recipient so here it is just in case. Cruz Roja Española, Avenida Reina Victoria 26, 28003, Madrid)
The best place to donate to a food bank for those affected is at the Mestalla and Levante stadiums in the city (Every town has their own foodbank and you should donate there as they are arranging the transport of the donated items to the affected area. Do not try to get there yourself from the outlying areas as this just blocks the roads for emergency vehicles and rescue)
I'd hold off on donating clothes, furniture etc until later as after the fire earlier this year there was too much help of things not really needed so keep an eye out for more information as it comes in. When the authorities start asking for that aid then we will let you know.
**You can now donate mattresses, bedding, warm clothes etc... but make sure to take them to official sites in order to get the distribution done in the best way possible.
***Saturday morning at 7am if you want to help then be at the City of Arts and Sciences with wellies or trekking shoes for mud, protective gloves as there are possibly dangerous materials in the affected zones, a mask and water and food for the day. There are fifty buses with capacity for 50 people each and each bus will be sent to a specific area with instructions of what is needed to be done.
(***Well that was a nightmare. Oversubscribed as 10,000 people turned up and then there was little coordination on behalf of the Generalitat when they got there)
Do You Have an Empty Property?
If you have a currently empty property or space in your house to take someone in for a few weeks perhaps then let us know so we can put you in touch with the official authorities who are organising temporary rehousing of people. As I write I don't know if this will be needed as sports centres and open spaces are being equipped for those affected but as more and more images appear from the area then I would expect this to be something that would be useful whilst the clean up and rebuilds happen. Most of the damage is to ground level houses and there are not many fallen buildings so it's more of a long cleanup and repairing garage doors, windows, blinds and more than demolition and rebuild.
We Got Lucky
None of us at Valencia Property have been directly affected by the floods. We got lucky as we all live to the north and west of the city and the damage is largely to the south. We have a few clients with outside walls that came down due to the pressure of the water and other small bits of damage but we all seem to have got lucky. We have been trying to contact all clients who we believed to be in the affected areas and we think they are all safe.
Gavin even cycled down through the mud in Paiporta to check out a client's house, they also got lucky as just a dribble of water had entered but in the underground car park below there was about a metre of water as the pump failed. Luckily they had no car or possessions down there. The neighbour's front wall came down but their's didn't and the next street was a disaster zone. However Gavin described horrendous scenes there including cars embedded into the mud in the barranco, we hope they were abandoned beforehand. And below that you can see that the new sports centre has also been destroyed. The question is how will this affect the society going forward as this is a hugely traumatic event. Gavin said that whatever you are seeing on the news and the images that are being published it's a whole lot worse at Ground Zero.
It must be pointed out that in Valencia it didn't even rain on Tuesday afternoon and yet just 5-6km away places were underwater! Valencia got lucky too. However the new riverbed built after the flooding of 1957 held firm and protected the city itself from the flood waters. If the Turia had still gone through the city then it would have been totally underwater. Now the question has to be asked as to what to do to protect the areas to the south of the city from future extreme weather events as they will happen more.
Our Podcast About the Flooding
Of course we had to do the podcast about this event so here it is. Tuesday the 5th of November as it stands here is the podcast and yes, I do have a major go at the local government.
Political Responsibility
Now of course this is a natural disaster and not all of the responsibility can be put on anyone but Mother Nature (And maybe the fossil fuel companies who have denied climate change for years) but there's also a big issue of political responsibility. On Tuesday everyone went to work as normal and the regional alert on everyone's phones didn't happen until 8.05pm that evening when places were already in serious trouble (See the video below from Chiva some hours before) and there were traffic jams everywhere due to roads being blocked with water and the rush hour.
Post by @meteoextremaView on Threads
The University told everyone to not bother coming into work on Tuesday morning. They knew what could happen as the Spanish National Weather Service (AEMET) had put out a red alert (This tweet is taken from 9am on Tuesday).
Mazon and the regional government ignored the red alert and refused to follow suit until it was much too late. In the video below you can see what this meant in Benetusser for example, posted by @annamanye. If the alert had gone out even a couple of hours earlier those cars and the people in those cars would not have been there. The alert should have been sent out in the morning to avoid people going into work.
What Happens Now?
On Monday everyone goes back to work as people try to piece their lives together. In my town, which missed the worst of course, it was strange to see kids going around last night doing Trick and Treat for Halloween when just 5km away in Ribarroja it's a disaster area. I'm sure there will be more help required over the next weeks and months so we will keep you in touch on the blog about the latest happenings.
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