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Spain flood death toll hits 205, rescuers yet to reach some parts of Valencia

Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising

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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, about 500 soldiers were deployed to hunt for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a fresh weather alert in Huelva in southwestern Spain.

Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising. It is already Spain’s worst flood-related disaster in modern history and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.

In Alfafar, a suburb outside the city of Valencia, Spain’s third-largest, drone footage showed the tangled wreckage of dozens of vehicles strewn across rail tracks.

“It’s all destroyed, shops, supermarkets, schools, cars,” said local resident Patricia Villar. Close by, a boat that had been carried by the floodwaters lay on a muddy street corner.

Emergency services working to clear cars piled up at the entrance of a flooded underpass in the suburb feared finding more trapped bodies.

“We’re trying to remove vehicles bit by bit to see if there are victims,” one rescue worker told state television. “We don’t know.”

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 Andalusia to assist rescue efforts, carrying a plastic tube and empty bottles to collect the petrol from the cars’ tanks.

A year of rain

A year of rain fell in just eight hours on Tuesday night, destroying roads, railway tracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks.

The flooding also submerged thousands of hectares of farmland in the region, which produces nearly two-thirds of citrus fruit in Spain — the world’s top exporter of oranges.

“The magnitude of the catastrophe has no precedent,” Transport Minister Oscar Puente told local television.

While the waters have subsided in most parts of Valencia, emergency services have still not been able to reach a few areas due to blocked roads. They included Albal, a neighbourhood close to Alfafar, one resident said.

Supplies of bottled drinking water were running low in some places and residents in the Valencia suburb of Paiporta were taking turns to guard shops after authorities said 50 people had been arrested for looting.

Standing in a churned up street as neighbours and volunteers did what they could to clean up in Paiporta, resident Amber Gonzalez, 72, said rebuilding and recovering from the floods would take time.

“No matter how much help we get it is not enough,” she said. “This is not going to be fixed in a month or two.”

As the death toll rose, a temporary morgue was set up at the Feria Valencia convention centre on the outskirts of Valencia city, emergency services said, and the first bodies started to arrive early on Friday.

The number of deaths has prompted anger as well as grief in Spain, with some people accusing authorities of being poorly prepared and not having warned people soon enough about the dangers posed by the storm.

Valencia resident Hector Bolivar, 65, questioned why a text message alert was only sent out at 8pm when the heavy rain had begun several hours earlier.

The president of Valencia’s regional government, Carlos Mazon, has said all protocols for disaster management were followed and that authorities began warning people from Sunday.

The death toll is the highest from floods in Europe since 1970, when 209 people died in Romania.

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.

“Regarding these environmental catastrophes, we pray for the people of the Iberian Peninsula, especially the Valencian Community, swept away by the storm,” Pope Francis said on Friday as he led prayers in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

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Indian team to visit Pakistan for Blind Cricket T20 World Cup 2024

The mega event will take place from November 23 to December 3

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Lahore: The Indian blind cricket team will tour Pakistan for the Blind Cricket T20 World Cup 2024 this month.

The World Blind Cricket Council (WBCC) announced on Friday the schedule for the fourth edition of the Blind T20 World Cup, featuring teams from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and hosts Pakistan.

The mega event will take place from November 23 to December 3 with matches scheduled in Lahore and Multan.

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Two killed, 6 injured in shooting at downtown Orlando amid Halloween celebration

Officers responded to reports of shots fired at Central Boulevard and Orange Avenue and within minutes

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(Reuters): Two people died and six were injured in a shooting in the downtown neighborhood of Orlando, Florida in the midst of Halloween festivities, the regional police department said on Friday, adding that a teenage suspect had been arrested.

The injured people were transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC) and were stable, according to the police.

The shooting of the eight people took place at around 1 a.m. (0500 GMT), within Orlando’s entertainment district where hundreds of people were celebrating Halloween.

Officers responded to reports of shots fired at Central Boulevard and Orange Avenue and within minutes, a second shooting was witnessed by officers south of Washington Street on Orange Avenue, Orlando police department said in a statement.

People in Halloween costumes stood in the incident area as emergency personnel attended to casualties lying in the street, a video, posted on Instagram and verified by Reuters, showed.

Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith said at a press conference that the alleged gunman, a 17-year-old boy, had been identified and taken into custody.

The police are still conducting an active investigation, Smith said.

The police department was assessing the need for increased patrols downtown this weekend, its statement said.

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