Spanish rescuers set up a makeshift mortuary at a conference center in Valencia today and struggled to reach cut-off areas as the death toll from deadly floods rose to 205 in Europe’s worst weather disaster in five decades.
In Valencia, the worst-hit eastern region, at least 202 people have died, according to local authorities. At least three other people died in Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia.
The death toll now approaches the 209 who died in the floods in Romania in 1970. The floods that hit Portugal in 1967 killed almost 500 people.
New storm warning for south-west Spain
In Valencia, 500 soldiers were deployed to search for missing people and offer help to survivors of the storm, while a new weather warning was issued in Huelva, south-west Spain.
The number of dead will probably continue to rise, as dozens of people are still missing, as Ángel Victor Torres, Minister of Regional Policy, said at a press conference late yesterday.
As about 75,000 homes remain without power, firefighters are pumping gasoline from cars abandoned on the streets to run generators in an attempt to supply power to homes.
They are looking for gas, food and water
“We’re going from car to car looking for gas,” said a firefighter who had traveled to Valencia from the southern region of Andalusia to help with rescue efforts.
In Alfafar, a suburb of Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, rescuers clambered over cars piled up in narrow streets while residents, dragging supermarket trolleys through the mud, waded past a boat that had been swept away by the waters and came to a crossroads.
“Everything has been destroyed, shops, supermarkets, schools, cars,” said Patricia Vilar, a resident of the area.
Volunteers with brooms, mops, shovels and buckets helped residents clear their neighborhoods of mud and debris. Others carried bags as they searched for food and water.
As the death toll rose, emergency services said they had set up a temporary mortuary at the Feria Valencia convention center on the outskirts of the city, with the first bodies arriving there early this morning.
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