Spain’s ‘monster’ floods expose Europe’s unpreparedness for climate change

The warnings arrived after the waters had already begun to rise.

Spain’s deadliest floods in decades are another harrowing reminder that Europe is unprepared for the consequences of a superheated atmosphere, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.

“This is the dramatic reality of climate change. And we must prepare to deal with it,” she said.

But the intensity of the rainfall that hit areas around Spain’s third-largest city, Valencia — in some places, roughly a year’s worth of rain in a single day — exposed the country’s unreadiness and led the Socialist-led national government to slam the center-right regional authorities for failing to pass on early warnings to people in danger.

Valencia’s regional government, which is responsible for coordinating emergency services in the affected areas, admitted that it had only sent out a text message warning residents of the impending catastrophe at 8:12 PM, eight hours after the first floods were reported, and 10 hours after Spain’s National State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) issued an alert highlighting “extreme danger” across the Valencia region.

By the time the Valencian authorities acted “the situation had already escalated significantly,” said an official from the national Ministry for the Ecological Transition.

“It is the regional governments in Spain who handle the warning systems and hold the authority to send alerts to citizens’ mobile phones to restrict mobility when necessary … Why this considerable delay in sending alert messages to mobile phones, advising against traveling or going to workplaces? We don’t know,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak about the politically explosive matter.

The regional government’s brief message, which warned of heavy rainfall and advised locals to stay indoors, came too late for many who found themselves trapped in low-lying homes, shops and roadways that were quickly overwhelmed by rapidly moving floodwaters.

By Wednesday afternoon, at least 92 people were confirmed dead, said the government official. Spain’s Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Victor Torres said that the scale of the material damages is “incalculable,” before adding: “We cannot yet give official figures on missing persons, which underscores the tremendous magnitude of this tragedy.”

Flood experts lamented the failure to adequately warn those in harm’s way.

“We can see that something’s gone wrong because so many people have died,” said Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading. 

“It was a giant monster of a storm … we knew beforehand that there was going to be heavy rainfall, but these warnings did not reach the people on the ground [in a timely manner],” Cloke added. She also lamented the lack of specific instructions for those at risk of their lives.

In recent weeks, several European countries have been hit by deadly and damaging floods. And floods in Greece, Belgium and Germany in the past few years served as further warnings about the increasing danger of extreme weather.

The fingerprint of climate change on the storm that hit Spain this week has not yet been measured. But scientists said Wednesday that warming was a key factor. The Mediterranean Sea broke all-time temperature records in August. That would, in turn, have led to more water being carried up into clouds.

“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change,” said Friederike Otto, who leads a team of researchers who study the impacts of climate change on extreme weather at Imperial College London.

Emergency services overwhelmed

On Tuesday evening, María Crespo, a civil servant based in Madrid, called her family in Alfafar, a town outside Valencia to check on them. They had received a text warning them of danger barely an hour before floodwaters began to pour into their home.

Crespo said that when she spoke to her sister and father-in-law around 09:30 PM, they assured her there was no rain and everything was fine. But half-an-hour later they called back in panic. Water overflowing from the usually bone-dry Turia river basin had rushed through the single-story house and was already waist deep.

“Before the battery ran out on their cellphones, around 4 a.m., they told me that they were spending the night on the roof because the house itself was completely flooded,” Crespo said. “They’ve been up there, exposed to the elements and freezing, but it could have been worse.”

Residents seeking help quickly discovered that they were on their own. Telephone networks crashed early in the evening, and the regional emergency services were overwhelmed by calls that led the 112 telephone line to effectively collapse.

Sandra Gómez, a Spanish Socialist MEP from Valencia, said that her husband, a teacher, was called into work on Tuesday evening because the local authorities had not issued an alert or suspended classes at that point. Before the emergency message reached her phone, her husband called to say he was trapped on a flooding motorway, with water reaching his hips. 

“He was very lucky” to escape before the waters rose further, she said.

Trade unions have called for investigations into companies that asked their employees to come into work despite the forecast. 

'Political responsibilities'

In Madrid, left-wing politicians in the Spanish parliament accused Carlos Mazón, the center-right president of the Valencia region, of not telling workers to stay home earlier in the day in a bid to keep local businesses operating. Mazón’s government was similarly blasted for having eliminated the Valencian Emergency Unit, an elite rapid response force tasked with addressing the impact of natural disasters, as a cost-cutting measure last year.

Spanish newspapers reported that the Valencian emergency coordination center convened only around 5 p.m. Tuesday.

“There are political responsibilities behind this tragedy,” said Republican Left of Catalonia lawmaker Gabriel Rufian. “The storm may have been inevitable, but there are people who have died because they were forced to go to work and others who perished, it seems because there weren’t well-equipped units to rescue them.”

Experts also cited the uncontrolled urban development of the Valencia region — one of Spain’s fastest-growing regions — as a key factor in the tragedy. Asphalt roadways acted as channels for rainwater that quickly overwhelmed communities built beside ravines or on the basins of diverted rivers. 

“Climate change is decisive in the magnitude of this natural disaster,” geologist Joan Escuer said on Spanish radio. “But its consequences wouldn't have been as great if we hadn't built infrastructure and allowed people to settle in high-risk places.”

The news of the dramatic death toll came just before von der Leyen presented a report on how to step up the EU’s capacity to cope with all kinds of crises, from wars to weather extremes.

“Preparedness must become part of the underlying logic of all our actions,” she declared, after beginning her speech with a promise to help Spain with the floods.

Von der Leyen has asked the Commission to write a comprehensive plan to better protect Europeans from climate extremes.

That will come too late for the residents of Spain’s devastated regions. On Wednesday afternoon, the storm turned south and AEMET issued a red warning for the region of Cádiz.

“We can’t led our guard down,” AEMET spokesperson Rubén del Campo said. “The situation in Cádiz province is exceptional.” 

This article has been updated to reflect the rising death toll.