Spanish rescuers opened a temporary morgue in a convention centre and battled to reach areas still cut off on Friday as the death toll from catastrophic floods rose to 205 people in Europe’s worst weather disaster in five decades.
In Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of the devastation, at least 202 people have died, regional authorities said. Three have died in Castilla La Mancha and Andalucía.
The number of dead is now almost level with the 209 who died during heavy floods in Romania in 1970. Floods in Portugal in 1967 killed nearly 500 people.
Some 500 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a fresh weather alert in Huelva in southwestern Spain.
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The death toll is likely to keep rising, with dozens of people still not accounted for, Angel Victor Torres, minister in charge of co-operation with Spain's regions, told a press conference late on Thursday.
With about 75,000 homes still without electricity, firefighters were siphoning petrol from cars that had been abandoned in the floods to power generators to get domestic supplies back on.
“We’re going from car to car looking for any petrol we can find,” said one firefighter who had travelled to Valencia from the southern region of Andalucía to assist rescue efforts, carrying a plastic tube and empty bottles to collect the petrol from the cars’ tanks.
A year of rain fell in just eight hours on Tuesday night, destroying roads, railtracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks.
In the municipality of Alfafar, south of the city of Valencia, the mayor appealed for help. Days after a deluge of muddy water had destroyed homes, swept away cars and cut off access to part of the town of 22,000 people, Juan Ramón Adsuara said there has been little sign of firefighters, soldiers or national police.
“We’ve been forgotten,” he told local media À Punt. “There are people living with corpses in their homes, this is really sad.”
Instead it had been left to residents and local police to do what they could. Some had been using their own machinery to try and clear out part of the municipality that remained inaccessible, while others were risking the roads to drive to Valencia in order to bring supplies.
“We’ve had to empty a supermarket to distribute food among the population,” he said. “Please, we’re asking for help. We’re running out of everything.” – Wires