We start in Spain, where the government has declared three days of morning after at least 72 people were killed in devastating flash floods in the Eastern Valencia and Southern Andalusia regions. Let's take a look at some of the pictures here from Málaga showing the extent of what's happened. In one town near Valencia, more than a year's worth of rain fell in just eight hours. Dozens of people remain unaccounted for, and local officials say it's impossible to put a final figure on the number of people who have died. Here's more footage, uploaded social media showing the chaos in Valencia, cars swept away. Spanish Prime Minister has promised to use all means available to help victims. Pedro Sánchez said, Those who had suffered would not be abandoned and their communities would be rebuilt. Now, let's show you what rainfall is expected to look like in the coming days. You can see here, frankly, more torrential downpours. More flooding is expected as the week goes on. This is Thursday going into Friday. Here's our Madrid correspondent, Guy Hedjka.
In a country more used to droughts than downpours, the extreme rainfall that has battered parts of Spain took many people by surprise. Emergency services have gone to great lengths to reach people as the number of dead continues to rise. They work through the night, searching floodwater and debris for those who may have been left behind. The Valencia region has been the hardest hit. Homes were flooded, cars were washed through streets, and bridges collapsed.
A flash flood came down. It wasn't raining here, but it came down from the mountain. It was already coming down with pine trees, branches, and everything at the same time. It came down very strongly. Yes, it went all the ravine down, and one of these bridges broke down as the water jumped to the road, taking three or four cars with it.
A house disappeared after the flood.
A house at the entrance of the town just disappeared. And there are at least two people who they don't know if they're still missing or not. Well, I'm not from here. My wife is. But a 90-year-old man here said he hadn't seen anything like this ever in his life.
Schools have been closed down. Many roads remain inaccessible. But rail and air links were also affected. Eastern parts of Spain are used to heavy rainfall at this time of year, but these flash floods are the worst the area has seen in at least four decades. Guy Hedjko, BBC News, Spain.
I just want to show you some of the latest pictures we have here at the BBC. Take a look at these images. See the impact of the floodwater This is near Raquina, which is west of Valencia. You get a real sense of the impact of this flooding. It is not over yet. More bad weather to come in the time ahead. Well, a little earlier, I spoke to John Clarke, a journalist, and he's editor of the Olive Press newspaper. He's been covering the floods.
Let's take a I'm here at the emergency center, the nerve center in Andalutia. I've just been up to Alara, which was the worst affected area here in Andalutia, where I saw an amazing number of cars have been swept away. I think there were 30 or 35 of them swept away there. It's an absolute miracle that nobody has so far been killed in Andalutia. I mean, the rainfall was absolutely staggering. And although we haven't had the same figures as Valencia, where I think there were 400 liters per meter squared, we had well over 100 in a day in just a few hours. Loads of roads were cut off around Rhonda, where I live, and down to Marbeya, where I have my office. Staff couldn't get into work. There have been countless roads. I think 200 kilometers of rural roads have been cut off. It's been quite shocking.
We're just seeing some images that you gave to us here of cars in all sorts of trouble. What about the people where you are? What are people being told to do?
Well, actually, what's happened just now is in the last half an hour, they just called a red alert for Khadiz as well as Tuta. Now, Cadiz is obviously the next province along from Malaga, and people are just being told to be very careful, to stay at home, do not go out. As there's been so much rain, it's so saturated that any rain that falls now, and I feel like it's about to drop any second here, when the rain does finally come down, it's going to go straight into rivers. Those rivers, apparently in Alara alone, the rivers flooded. The Guadelhauethe River rose by seven meters. And various people I spoke to in Alara village today said that their houses had a meter and a half of rain inside them. So they were really scared.
Well, thanks to John Clark. He spoke to me just a little earlier. We can speak now to our Environment Correspondent, Matt McGrath. Hi, Matt. Just provide us with a bit of context around these weather events.
Well, that's right, Lewis. I mean, scientists It would be very reluctant to say that these events were caused by climate change, but they're in very little doubt that climate change certainly influenced the scale of them. As we've been hearing earlier on, these type of storms happen quite a bit in Spain this time of year in autumn and winter. But what's happening in the climate, heating up the Mediterranean Sea, putting extra energy into the sea may have intensified the nature of the storms that resulted. Undoubably, as we know from climate science dating back numbers of years now, the warmer atmosphere holds more water. So when those heavy clouds form over the land, come over the land of Spain, they downpour, they deluge huge amounts, torrents of water. And another factor here which may be affecting it, which is climate-related, is the dryness of the ground. The land may well have been dried out over the last couple of years. We've had a number of droughts in this part of Spain, making the ground very hard baked, if you like, in the heat. That pushes the water off and makes those intensity of the floods that we saw much more powerful, much speedy.
Given those factors, what are some of the things that can be done here?
Apart from dealing with the whole issue of climate change, there's very little that can be done on the ground. I mean, better warnings is one of the things a number of scientists have talked about. They talked about more accurate warnings. These are very difficult to do when you have fast moving thunderstorms. There's been some talk about how we don't train for these type of events, how in places like Japan, where you have earthquakes, and other places where you have tsun, children do drills. We don't train or drill people in Europe for flash flood events. Maybe that's something that people will have to change in the future. The overarching question here, really, though, is, do we have the right infrastructure for the climate that we now live in? We have the infrastructure that we've had for the last 50 or 100 years for an older climate. But the way that the climate is changing, is that infrastructure capable of dealing with the extreme events like we saw in Spain the last day or so?
Of course, that would mean investment, Matt.
Absolutely. It would require huge amounts of money to make the adaptive changes that are needed to be able to cope with this type of event. Now, richer countries like Spain and the UK and many others can cope with that potentially, but it's still a big political ask and not necessarily popular with voters. But other parts of the world where they don't have those resources, they have to deal with the same change in climate and the same type of events. We've seen them all over the world this year, and at the moment, the money isn't there to make those changes in those countries either.
Matt, thank you very much for that.
At least 72 people have died in the south-east of Spain, where flash flooding has caused “enormous destruction”. Rescue teams ...