Valencia residents say flood warnings came too late – DW

Cars are piled up and rescuers search for missing people and try to clear roads in Spain’s Valencia region, after the region was hit by severe flooding. Some residents are trying to save their belongings, while others are leaving the hardest-hit areas and seeking shelter with friends and relatives. The regional government has set up emergency shelters for people whose homes have been destroyed or made uninhabitable by the natural disaster.

The floods that have devastated parts of southeastern Spain, including areas in Andalusia, Castilla La Mancha and Murcia, are the worst in modern history. Authorities say more than 200 people have been killed, most in Valencia. The latter had been on red alert since Tuesday and it was only on Thursday afternoon that authorities finally lowered the warning for most regions to “orange” or “yellow”.

Authorities too slow to act?

A growing number of people are now accusing Spanish authorities of being too slow to raise the alarm. Reports indicate that Valencia Regional Civil Protection only sent alerts via mobile phones – a so-called ES Alert – around 8pm on Tuesday. Spanish authorities use an emergency alert system that allows them to send alerts to all mobile phones in an area in the event of a crisis. By then, however, southwestern Spain, including Valencia, had already experienced 48 hours of heavy rain, causing small rivers to overflow their banks and flood roads.

Only last Sunday did Valencia authorities and authorities in other nearby regions test the telephone alerts. After an initial failure, they followed up with a second warning, which then arrived on the terminals with a ten-minute delay, according to the local newspaper Valencia Square.

But the head of Valencia’s regional government, Carlos Mazon, did not blame technical problems for the phone messages. Instead, he emphasized that authorities must follow proper protocol to notify the public. On Wednesday, he posted a video on .

Heavy rainfall is not uncommon in Spain. Particularly in the southeast, what is known as a “gota fria” or cold drop is used to refer to very heavy rain showers that occur in this area. Meteorologists are still puzzled by the phenomenon, even though it has been known for a long time, says Andreas Walter of the German Weather Service. “In principle, cold drops can be seen in the weather models. But where exactly the rain will fall and how much will fall can often only be estimated a few hours before the event,” says Walter.

This is reflected in the warnings of the Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET). Heavy rainfall was announced in the south of the country last weekend. Since Saturday, meteorologists have repeatedly adjusted forecasts and severe weather warnings were issued for several parts of Spain. Some municipalities in Valencia even closed schools on Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, AEMET upgraded the weather warning for the province of Valencia from ‘orange’ to ‘red’. According to the Spanish news channel, the regional government followed suit at 7:47 a.m. that morning La Razon. About an hour later, the local emergency response center advised people not to drive unless absolutely necessary.

Shortly before noon, a warning was sent to residents of towns along the Magro River, which flows from west to east through the province of Valencia. They were ordered not to go near the river because it might overflow its banks. At that time, the Valenciana Province Emergency Operations Center was already posting weather updates and warnings about the storm on X (formerly Twitter). Just before 4 p.m., the agency posted a video showing muddy water streets in the Utiel-Requena wine region, near the source of the Magro. At that time, the ES Alert phone message was still set to ‘orange’.

Parallels from Germany?

Following the devastating floods that hit Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany in 2021, there was also widespread criticism that authorities had failed to warn residents in time. The floods in Rhineland-Palatinate killed 141 people and injured almost 800. About 500 buildings were destroyed and another 2,500 damaged.

“In order to make a comparison with the flooding in the Ahr valley, we first need more data from Spain,” German weather expert Walter told DW. “However, it is already clear that the amount of rain that fell in Spain is much greater than the amount that fell in the Ahr valley at the time.”

It is not only the amount of precipitation, but also the geographical composition that plays a role, Walter told DW. “If the rainfall in the Ahr valley, for example, had only fallen a little further north, the consequences would not have been so catastrophic,” he emphasizes.

This is due to the lowlands in the area around Cologne and Bonn, a largely flat landscape where rainfall has less dangerous consequences than in places such as the narrow Ahr valley.

This article has been translated from German