The Camino de la Torre before was an avenue, with its low houses, its street lamps and its garbage containers and this Saturday was simply a river. In this street of the Toledo municipality of Escalona (3,801 inhabitants), until reaching 200 homes from La Ribera, which for two weeks cannot be accessed, and has forced to evict 100 of them, as its mayor, Álvaro Gutiérrez, assured this newspaper. The one that has kept dozens of points in Spain on alert this week, still threatens with more water and grown in different areas of Toledo, Madrid and Ávila, although the rivers channels in these last two points had stabilized on Saturday. In Escalona and five other municipalities of the Alberche Basin, the families that still remain, do so looking at the sky. With the capacity of the reservoirs to the limit and the amount that the nearby dams are releasing, they fear that the river will eat the lower part of its people.
To understand how two hundred houses have been covered by the water in Escalona, it is necessary to understand that the average flow of this river as it passes through the municipality is 14 cubic meters per second. “This Saturday that figure has climbed at 400, it is absolutely extraordinary,” has emphasized his mayor. So the pool has multiplied almost 30 his strength, for everything that has rained for two weeks and that in the last 24 hours he has exceeded any prognosis. Only in this morning they have had to dislodge 40 families, when they had done so 60 in recent days. It depends on the water that falls in the reservoirs in the form of rainfall or by thaw, ”Gutiérrez explained late on Saturday afternoon.
Antonio and his wife carried the few appliances that fit them in their van, in addition to the essentials, two televisions, children’s clothing, some toys and suitcases with clothes. They were determined to leave, as another hundred have done, from their houses near the river to take refuge in that of a relative in Madrid. “My brother has already lost his house below, everything was floating, the river has passed over him. Luckily the Firefighters took him from there with the water to the waist,” says Antonio. He has put some bags of land at the entrance, although he knows that this will not stop the current of the Alberche, that although this Saturday circulates calm, he fears that if there are more unwinders Rramble with everything in his path.
Some operators of the City of Escalona, health technicians of the SESCAM (Health Service of Castilla-La Mancha) and Civil Protection officials reviewed some of the most affected houses to ensure that no one remained. “There are people to whom we warn at 5 in the morning of this Saturday and that still this afternoon they have not yet left. We hope that the water does not rise anymore and it is not too late,” says an operator who prefers not to give his name, with the water through the knee. They look out the windows, they go up to the fences and offer them accommodation in the municipal sports center, which has become a provisional shelter this Saturday for some families. Few, only five, they have decided to spend the first night there, because according to the technicians, many of the residents in this urbanization have relatives in Madrid (one hour by car), in the town or these homes were only a second residence.
The gaze is stuck in what happens in the Burguillo reservoir, in the skirts of the Sierra de Gredos, between and Toledo, whose prey this Saturday emptied water to the pool. Another of the affected reservoirs is that of chopped and the swamp of San Juan. Among the three and, depending on the water that drain the Alberche River, it will be the one that circulates through this point of the Toledo municipality of Escalona. A total of 25 reservoirs belonging to the demarcation of the Tagus in the provinces of Guadalajara, Madrid, Toledo and Cáceres exceed the red warning threshold, while this Saturday they have significantly unpacked 19 dams, EFE reported in the middle of the afternoon.
The Government delegate in Castilla-La Mancha, Milagros Tolón, has put “all the help” of the central executive available to the populations affected by the floods of the Tajo and Alberche rivers in the province of Toledo. Tolón has visited Talavera de la Reina (84,000 inhabitants), one of the areas that most concern about the flood of the Tajo River as it passes through the city, which already reaches speeds greater than 1,000 cubic meters per second. The mayor of Talavera, José Julián Gregorio, has offered nearby populations such as Cazalegas or Pepine Municipal Resources in case evacuations had to be made.
14 communities on alert
The storm Martin He has continued affecting this Saturday a good part of Spain, with 14 communities in Wind or Snow Notice, in addition to the river flows in Toledo, Ávila and Madrid. In Ávila, which dawned on Monday with its low part flooded, the situation has stabilized this Saturday. The great fear came from the Sierra, in case a possible thaw could cause more grown up from the Adaja River and the boy, which converge in a residential neighborhood attached to the bullring, which still continued to shrink water from the garages this Saturday. The president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, who has visited the town, has decided to maintain level 2 of emergency, although he stressed that the forecasts point to a decrease in temperatures, which has calmed the population: “in the short term there is no risk due to thaw, although it is necessary to continue vigilant and pending”.
At this point in the town, the Mafalda nursery, in the southern area of Ávila, dawned with the damage caused by the flood of both rivers on Friday morning. The row floor raised almost half a meter, as if an animal had sneaked under the door; The toys that the water left floating through the garden, piled up in a corner; The muddy diapers, the still humid furniture, the inflated doors that do not close. Standing there have been some of the drawings painted with watercolor that the children (the center has around 45 students) had tended to dry in the main classroom. Its owner, Montse, tells that despite the fear that persists to a new flood of the river, he has slept “calm”: “After spending all Friday shrinking water, what more can happen? That day the water reached us above the knee. Luckily it was less bad that it was at night and this was not full of children,” tells El País from the entrance to the center, one of the oldest in the municipality, which has already served three generations of abulenses.
Some areas of Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Galicia, Community of Madrid, Region of Murcia, the Basque Country, Valencian Community and the Canary Islands have continued in notice until mid-afternoon of this Saturday. The worst, according to the AEMET, is the important risk due to coastal phenomena in Asturias, Cantabria, Galicia and the Basque Country, where different areas are in orange warning, with waves of 5 to 8 meters. The State Meteorology Agency has requested special caution in the northern peninsular zone, where snow dimensions will fall around 800 and 1,200 meters in the North and North Peninsular Plateau, while in the south and Mediterranean slope will be between 1,000 and 1,400 meters.
