BarcelonaThe week ends just as it began. A new storm, now in the Empordà, has unleashed a heavy downpour that has ended up causing an early morning flood in Cadaqués. In fact, during the night up to 120 l/m² ended up falling in this Empordà municipality. Around three o’clock, the town’s stream, which functions as a normal paved street that is usually dry, has suddenly begun to go down with a lot of flow coming from the mountains to the point that thirty cars have been rushed down it. parked in this area. The cars have been jammed against the bridge at the mouth of Gran beach. This accumulation of vehicles has caused a blockage that has rapidly raised the level of the stream and the water has entered the basement of some buildings and has caused damage and denied surrounding streets. However, luckily there have been no victims or injuries.
Images of tonight’s floods in Cadaqués
The damage has been exclusively material, with a lot of damaged cars, crushed by the impact of the bridge. In the morning, the image of the center of the town was shocking, with a mountain of vehicles facing the sea, which a crane has been removing one by one, in addition to streets closed, still with a few fingers of running water down the slope and many neighbors working to take water from establishments. Now, the situation is not at all comparable to that of the Valencian Country, since the stream did not carry as much mud and in a few hours most of the buildings have been cleaned.
While the town recovers normality, many curious people come to the area to comment on the play. One of them is Hugo Scoccia, a local writer very fond of meteorology who, aware of the storm forecasts, has stayed awake all night watching the radar. “At half past two I started hearing the car alarms, I left the house and I saw this tide of water and how the vehicles began to crash into the bridge,” explains the young man, author of the videos that have gone viral. on the network. “I’m 32 years old and I’ve never seen the river like this, luckily it’s stopped raining and, around five in the morning, everything has calmed down. Otherwise, given that the mouth was blocked, it would have been much worse,” he comments. According to the oldest neighbors, this has not been the worst: “In 1986 the bridge broke and the supermarket was full of water, with all the food and milk on the floor,” recalls Carlos, the oldest neighbor.
This is how Cadaqués rises after tonight’s floods
Neighbors and tourists have lost their cars
Of the cars affected, some are residents of the municipality, who, although they know perfectly well that the stream is a flood zone, were not aware of the risk tonight. Based on Civil Protection data, the Cadaqués City Council turned on the traffic lights that warn of the prohibition of parking in the stream and placed cones in the area. However, some users, due to ignorance or lack of concern, parked anyway. “The notice is only at the entrance, but the residents of the town often enter through other entrances. I was not aware of the rain forecast, they did not send any notice to my cell phone, otherwise I would have parked,” explains one affected person. Some foreign tourists who spent the night in the hotels on the bank of the stream and did not see the recommendation have also lost their vehicles. “We didn’t know it was a river, we had a rental car and now we are talking to the company to see how we can solve it, because we have to return to Barcelona to continue the trip to Italy,” explains Chenyu, an Australian tourist.
Although some cars parked despite the ban, the City Council defends that the protocols worked correctly: “We were on orange alert, not red and black, so in the afternoon we made the appropriate signaling,” explains Pia Serinyana, mayor of the municipality. And he adds: “Seeing that some neighbors had disobeyed, the Local Police tried to locate them, but at night we saw that it was more dangerous for them to go pick them up.”
Despite the violence of the flood of water, the hotels and businesses on both sides of the stream have not suffered major damage, and have only had to regret flooding of an inch of water, since, precisely to prevent situations like this, the Most have raised entrances with steps. “Although we have already solved everything, as people are somewhat scared by the catastrophe in Valencia, clients have called us to make cancellations for the weekend,” laments the owner of Hostal Marina. On the other hand, the Mos and Cadaq’s restaurants in Plaza del Passeig have suffered more material damage, where some refrigerators or food in the warehouse have been damaged.
Civil Protection has not considered it necessary to activate alerts
Civil Protection defended that the storms were monitored, but that it did not consider it necessary to activate the Inuncat plan alert or send alert messages to the population. In statements to ACN, the deputy director of the organization, Imma Solé, said that the impact was “very localized” and that it has been monitored that there were no serious consequences.
Since yesterday, Meteocat had activated the yellow warning in the area due to locally intense rain that could leave more than 20 l/m² in just half an hour, but the showers have been much more abundant and violent than initially expected. Shortly after four in the morning, Meteocat itself urgently activated the orange alert in Alt Empordà due to accumulations of water that could exceed 100 l/m². As Civil Protection was already in contact with the agents involved, it was considered that it was not necessary to go one step further and send a mass alert.
The showers and storms that fell this night and early morning throughout the Costa Brava are no longer related to the historic DANA that hit the Valencian Country last week and Catalonia on Monday. What happened this morning in Empordà is the effects of an area of instability with cold air at altitude that has caused irregular showers and showers in several parts of the country in recent hours.
The two wettest weeks in almost 4 years
Catalonia has experienced the two rainiest weeks since January 2020, when the ‘Gloria’ storm took place. This is concluded by a report published today by the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya, which highlights that between October 25 and November 8, the majority of regions have exceeded 100 l/m² accumulated, especially due to the effects of DANA. The area where it has rained the most is in the Els Ports massif -in the interior of the Terres de l’Ebre- where it has exceeded 300 l/m², and has even touched 450 l/m² in the meteorological station of the Els Ports natural park. In many cases these rains have fallen in the form of torrential downpours that have left more than 100 l/m² in just a few hours, causing numerous floods and incidents.
The fact that it has not rained so much and so consecutively in our country for almost five years demonstrates the serious and historic drought we are experiencing. The water has raised the reservoirs of the internal basins, especially those in the south of the country, which were practically dry. However, the most significant amounts of water bypassed the headwaters of the most important rivers in the internal basins, which meant that the rise was not so spectacular. However, reserves already exceed 33% and continue to increase, accumulating an increase of nearly six points.