A warning from Valencia: Aftermath of One of the Worst Climate Catastrophe in Recent Years
Written by: Laura Lallana
Image credit: David Ramos. Sevadí, Valencia. November 2024.
On October 29th 2024, Spain experienced the full brunt of a DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos), a Spanish term for a meteorological phenomenon known for unleashing torrential rains and catastrophic flooding - high-altitude cut-off low-pressure system also known as Cold Drop - . The Southeast of Spain is particularly susceptible to DANAS, including Valencia, Andalusia and Murcia and were the most affected regions, especially Valencia.
The most affected area received more than 300 millimeters of rainfall during a 4-hour period, beating all the national records of the amount of water poured in 1 hour, 6 and 12 hours. In many parts the amount of water was the equivalent to a whole year of rains.
Image credit: AEMET. Graphic of accumulated precipitation in Valencia. October 2024.
The preliminary report of AEMET, Spanish state meteorological agency shows the accumulated precipitation of October 29, 2024, with more than 300 liters per cubic meter in some areas.
Even though the AEMET, issued a red alert in the province of Valencia in the morning, the alarm did not arrive until 8:20 p.m., when the storm had already left overflowing ravines, strong winds and flooding in different rivers. By that time, panic was already set in as the water kept rising. People realized the seriousness of the matter and could do little else other than take shelter as they could, climbing on the roofs of trucks or cars, or to the rooftops of stores or gas stations. For all of them that night is one to forget filled with uncertainty, fear, and helplessness.
Next morning when the sun rose again, the Valencians got up immersed in immense brown chaos. DANA had left a trail of destruction and despair.
Image credit: NASA. Satellite image of Valencia before and after the DANA. October 2024.
The aftermath was catastrophic, making this particular DANA one of the worst tragedies the country has experienced in the past century with at least 223 deaths according to the Spanish government official website. Not only have people’s lives been taken away in this catastrophe but the material damage caused to houses, business or cars is staggering, leaving countless families and business owners facing overwhelming losses. This area has a population of approximately 1.8 million people that have been affected to a greater or lesser extent.
The Insurance Compensation Consortium has counted 48,003 damaged houses of the 130,000 houses in the area. Meaning that thousands of families have lost everything they had.
One of the most affected sectors is agriculture, where more than 60,000 hectares of low harvests have been lost, as well as extensive plantations of permon and citrus fruits.
Image credit: García-Santos. Alora, Spain. November 2024.
If we were to talk about the heart of the disaster this would be the town of Paiporta. However, the number of municipalities affected by DANA’s consequences extends to 75 different towns. For the people affected, life has been forever altered, houses have been reduced to rubble, businesses have to face significant economic disruption, railways and roads have been turned into rivers, and water and electricity supplies were cut off, leaving people totally isolated.
Image credit: Miguel Ángel Polo. Roads turned into rivers in Valencia, October 2024.
Despite the pain and seeing that the aid from the regional and central governments wasn’t enough, the Spanish people managed to draw strength to organize one of the greatest signs of solidarity, compassion and support seen in the recent years. Thousands of volunteers from different parts of the country decided to go to Valencia to help the most affected ones. Cleaning up operations, taking water and mud out of the houses and premises, bringing food, clothing and medicines to the people who had just lost everything or simply contacting relatives. The shocking and frustrating situation led to the creation of the slogan ‘the people save the people’ due to the discontent of the population with the management of governments in the face of the catastrophe.
Image credit: Batekin. Volunteers cleaning the streets of villages affected by the DANA, November 2024.
The Spanish government has implemented measures to support the people affected by the tragedy, but every aid feels small when you have lost it all. These measures include infrastructure repair, financial aid, tax relief, and temporary employment regulations. Despite this, the damage was so significant that it would take months if not years for the region to recover properly. Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience at University of Reading, Liz Stephens on the importance of implementing measures for reducing the impacts of DANA: “Measures to reduce the impact of these floods can be implemented very quickly, such as working collaboratively with decision makers and at-risk communities to improve the effectiveness of early warning systems.”
Spain’s DANA disaster is not an isolated incident, in the recent years we have contemplated how extreme weather events are increasing all over the world. In September 2024 several European countries such as Romania, Austria, Poland or Czech Republic flooded with catastrophic consequences caused by Storm Boris. The storm destroyed homes, schools and livelihoods, thousands of people needed to be evacuated and at least 26 people died.
This fast-flooding event was also seen all over the UK where Storm Bert damaged 400 homes as well as businesses and other infrastructure last November.
Image credit: Euronews. Firefighter rescuing a woman in Romania, September 2024.
The increasing intensity of these and other extreme climatic phenomena such as heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, cyclones or sea level rise is closely linked to climate change. Jorge Olcina, Professor of Regional Geographic Analysis at the University of Alicante indicates flooding phenomena such as DANA aren’t the only atmospheric phenomena that are experiencing an increase in their development: “Heatwaves are becoming more intense and frequent as well as strong wind storms with waves that hit the coastline. In short, in the current context of climate change, the extremes atmospheric are already becoming more frequent and climate models indicate a maintenance of this trend in the coming decades.”
The DANA catastrophe in Spain is a powerful reminder of the great increase of extreme weather phenomenon and its intensity. Due to climate change these atmospheric events are becoming more frequent, making it obvious that measures need to be taken in order to know how to act when climatic disaster like these happen, avoiding live losses due to lack of preparation. Governments all over the world should start adapting infrastructure, warning systems and technologies to minimize the effects of these types of events. Tackling these problems will require global efforts to adapt to new climatic conditions due to global warming.