By David Latona and Charlie Devereux
ALFAFAR, Spain (Reuters) – Spanish rescuers opened a temporary morgue in a convention centre and battled to reach cut-off areas on Friday after catastrophic floods killed at least 158 people in the worst weather disaster to hit the country in modern history.
In Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of the devastation, 500 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a fresh weather alert in Huelva in southwestern Spain.
The death toll is likely to keep rising, with dozens of people yet to be accounted for, Angel Victor Torres, minister in charge of cooperation with Spain’s regions, told a press conference late on Thursday.
With about 75,000 homes still without electricity, firefighters were siphoning petrol from cars that had been abandoned in the floods to power generators to get domestic supplies back on.
“We’re going from car to car looking for any petrol we can find,” said one firefighter who had travelled to Valencia from the southern region of Andalusia to assist rescue efforts, carrying a plastic tube and empty bottles to collect the petrol from the cars’ tanks.
A year of rain fell in just eight hours on Tuesday night, destroying roads, railtracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks.
The flooding also submerged thousands of hectares of farmland in the region, which produces nearly two-thirds of citrus fruit in Spain – the world’s top exporter of oranges.
‘ALL DESTROYED’
In Alfafar, a suburb outside the city of Valencia, Spain’s third-largest, rescue personnel clambered over cars and caravans piled high in its narrow streets while residents dragging shopping trolleys through the mud walked past a boat dumped by the floodwaters on a street corner.
“It’s all destroyed, shops, supermarkets, schools, cars,” said Patricia Villar, a local resident.
Volunteers armed with broomsticks, mops, shovels and buckets were setting out across the region to help clean up neighbourhoods caked in silt and debris. Others carried shopping bags as they searched for food and water.
As the death toll rose, a temporary morgue was set up at the Feria Valencia convention centre on the outskirts of the capital, emergency services said, and the first bodies started to arrive early on Friday.
The number of deaths has prompted anger as well as grief in Spain, with some people accusing authorities of being poorly prepared and not having warned people soon enough about the dangers posed by the storm.
Valencia resident Hector Bolivar, 65, questioned why a text message alert was only sent out at 8 p.m. when the heavy rain had begun several hours earlier.
“I can be grateful because I’m alive but that doesn’t take away the responsibility of those people that in order to achieve votes, they tell us they will be with us, because in the hour of truth, they are not,” said Carmen Molina, 55, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Carlos Mazon, president of Valencia’s regional government, has said all protocols for disaster management were followed and that authorities began warning people from Sunday.
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