At least 14 people died Tuesday in torrential rains in Turkey and Bulgaria but also in Greece, barely out of a summer of devastating fires, and where as much rain fell as in a year, according to the authorities.
In Spain, a country on the front line of global warming, bad weather after months of drought has also claimed the lives of three dead and three missing in recent days, authorities said.
In Turkey, according to the latest report to date, at least seven people died on Tuesday evening, including two in Istanbul.
One person remains missing in the province of Kirklareli (North-West).
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya reported 31 injuries, including eight still hospitalized in Istanbul, where streets were turned into torrents.
A subway station was partially flooded and dozens of people had to be evacuated from a municipal library, according to media reports.
The rains follow a particularly dry summer that saw water reservoirs in this city of 16 million people fall to their lowest level in nine years.
In neighboring Bulgaria, where the rain had also stopped by midday on Wednesday, at least four people died on the Black Sea coast on Tuesday. Thousands of tourists have been affected.
A 61-year-old worker drowned and the body of another 51-year-old man was found. The bodies of two women – the 54-year-old president of the regional court and her 30-year-old doctor daughter – were later recovered. They were crossing a bridge by car when it was swept away by the waves of a river.
It fell in 24 hours the equivalent of several months of rain, unseen since 1994, according to the head of relief Alexandar Djartov.
The city of Tsarevo, the hardest hit, declared a day of mourning.
“About 4,000 people are affected,” said Bulgarian Tourism Minister Zaritsa Dinkova, who went there, citing difficulties in evacuating them.
While the Black Sea coast is rarely hit by floods, Bulgaria is seeing these phenomena increase against a backdrop of climate change.
Environment Minister Julian Popov warned on Nova television of the danger posed by “the poor state of the infrastructure and the excessive number of constructions on the coast”.
In Greece, bordering Turkey and Bulgaria, the storm, to which the name “Daniel” has been given, has killed 3 people since Monday evening. Greece’s Civil Protection warned torrential rains would continue on Wednesday before receding on Thursday.
“This is the most extreme phenomenon in terms of the amount of water that has fallen in the space of 24 hours since Greece has had archives on the subject,” Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said on Tuesday.
“It seems that the mountainous region of Magnesia has been affected by 600 to 800 mm of rain in 24 hours”, “an unprecedented phenomenon in the country’s meteorological data”, measured since 1955, said Dimitris Ziakopoulos, a government meteorologist expert.
“This is an extreme phenomenon,” said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The torrential rains mainly affected the department of Magnesia (center) and its capital, the port city of Volos, 331 km north of Athens.
An 87-year-old woman who has been missing since Tuesday “was found dead on Wednesday in the village of Paltsi,” firefighter spokesman Yannis Artopios told Ert television on Wednesday.
Another person was found dead in the department of Karditsa, also affected like that of Trikala.
On Tuesday, a 51-year-old man swept away by a flood of a torrent was found dead near Volos.
Buildings and streets in Volos and neighboring villages were flooded by flooding rivers and torrents.
Volos has been without electricity since Tuesday evening and in the villages near Mount Pelion many buildings and streets have been badly damaged by floods and landslides, according to an AFP journalist on the spot.
“I have never seen such a phenomenon, thousands of shops and buildings have been flooded in Volos and no one is there to help us,” a resident of the city, Vassilis, was indignant with AFP. Tsalamouras, 58 years old.
The national meteorological service (EMY) issued a warning on Monday and the government assures that “the authorities are on alert”.
This storm comes after devastating fires this summer in Greece (at least 26 dead), one of which, described as “the biggest ever recorded” in the European Union, ravaged for two weeks in August the national park of Dadia in the ‘Evros (North).
With global warming, the atmosphere contains more water vapor (about 7% for each additional degree), increasing the risk of heavy precipitation events which, together with other factors such as urbanization, lead to flooding.
06/09/2023 19:44:48 – Vólos (Greece) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
