After months of historic drought, Spain is hit by torrential rains that left three dead and three missing, while a ten-year-old child managed to escape drowning by taking refuge in a tree.
These bad weather, which have affected the country since this weekend, particularly affected the regions of Madrid and Castille-La-Manche (center), where torrential rains fell overnight from Sunday to Monday.
The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, announced Monday morning on social networks “the death of two people in the province of Toledo”, in the localities of Casarrubios del Monte and Bargas. He did not give details of the circumstances of the deaths.
The Civil Guard announced later in the day the death of a third person, a 50-year-old man whose body was located near a stream in Camarena, in the same province of Toledo.
Research is also underway to find, in the same area, a “woman who disappeared following the flood (of a river) in Valmojado”, also indicated the Civil Guard.
In the neighboring region of Madrid, a man was also wanted after being carried away in the night in his vehicle by a flooded river in the municipality of Aldea del Fresno.
“We are inspecting the river to try to locate the vehicle,” Madrid-area emergency services spokesman Javier Chivite told state television.
His 10-year-old son, who was traveling with him, was rescued after taking refuge in a tree, authorities said. His mother and sister, who were also in the vehicle, had been rescued earlier.
“The poor (child) spent the whole night perched on a tree,” said the president of the region, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, visiting Aldea del Fresno, one of the localities most affected by these bad weather.
According to an AFP photographer on the spot, several bridges collapsed in this town located west of the Spanish capital, and torrents of mud coming out of the bed of the river carried away many cars.
An 83-year-old man, “carried away by the current” in the neighboring town of Villamanta, is also wanted, according to the Civil Guard.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez launched an “appeal to citizens to continue to act with caution” on Monday morning.
In the affected regions, many roads were cut off. Rail traffic, temporarily suspended since Sunday, remained severely disrupted, especially between Madrid and Andalusia and on the Mediterranean coast.
In Madrid, these torrential rains also led to the temporary closure of several metro lines.
Although the rains calmed down somewhat on Monday, the National Meteorological Agency kept seven regions on alert, including Madrid, Castile-La Mancha, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Basque Country.
The Madrid authorities have recommended that the nearly seven million inhabitants of the region telecommute and avoid unnecessary travel in the capital, the access to which was very congested on Monday morning.
On Sunday, Madrid residents received an emergency alert on their mobile phones accompanied by a loud sound signal, unprecedented in Spain, inviting them to stay at home.
A country on the front line of global warming, with 75% of its territory threatened by desertification, Spain is regularly hit by torrential rains in late summer and autumn, which struggle to penetrate the ground and cause sudden swelling. the bed of the rivers.
This phenomenon, called “Dana” by meteorologists (“isolated depression at high levels”), sometimes has dramatic consequences. In 2018, 13 people died on the Balearic island of Mallorca.
04/09/2023 18:05:59 – Madrid (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
