Shortly after three in the afternoon this Saturday, . The wind of up to 90 kilometers per hour and the intense rain hit a land oozing with water and an overflowing river, the Guadalete, keeping 2,200 people evacuated in Jerez de la Frontera. But two hours later, as the storm moved inland, people in the Cadiz town breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that, for now, they were resisting within gravity. And that feeling of tense relief is what dominates for now in the provinces of Seville and Córdoba, with Guadalquivir at red level and overflowing in several points. “We are vigilant and attentive, but I want to call for calm and tranquility,” summarized the mayor of Córdoba, José María Bellido.
But the trail of destruction in Andalusia, with a train of storms that gives no respite, is important. Late last night, the mayor of Canena (Jaén), José Carlos Serrano, confirmed that a man was injured this afternoon after the fall of a wall in Canena (Jaén), while it is unknown if there may be another person trapped in the rubble. The injured man, who has been taken by ambulance to the Úbeda hospital, is an immigrant worker in the olive campaign. There are already more than 11,089 people evicted (7,707 in Cádiz, 1,500 in Córdoba, 687 in Jaén, 586 in Málaga, 400 in Granada and 209 in Seville), there are six municipalities cut off and 206 roads affected, the majority in Cádiz, according to data from the Junta de Andalucía.
The Government has 10,000 troops deployed in the community. The Government delegate in Andalusia, Pedro Fernández, has also announced discharges in 33 reservoirs. Fernández has guaranteed the Government’s support “for the reconstruction, recovery and relaunch of the affected territories.” He thus seemed to pick up the gauntlet of the president of the Government of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, who has announced that he will ask for state aid for reconstruction and has announced that, on roads alone, there is already damage valued at 500 million. Meanwhile, the Coordinator of Farmers and Livestock Organizations (COAG) has warned of increasing damage that already represents an impact of 3,000 million euros.
Córdoba, where the Andalusian president has appeared, spent Saturday with his sights set on the Guadalquivir, with the forecast of 40 to 60 liters per square meter falling throughout the weekend, added to the discharges in Jaén and Córdoba. There are already more than 1,500 people evicted in the province, more than 1,000 in the capital alone, although for now the City Council rules out new evictions. The last evacuations last Friday night on the outskirts of the city were due to overflowing streams. The water has already entered the vacated plots and neighborhoods, “although in a lighter way than in 2010,” Bellido clarified. The forecast continues to be that a situation similar to that of then will occur. In the province, riverside municipalities such as Palma del Río (with preventive evictions), Villa del Río, Almodóvar del Río, El Carpio or Villafranca are of concern. And next to the Guadalquivir, the Genil and the Guadajoz keep watch.
After a Friday of flooding, the maximum level of the river was reached on Friday night with almost 6 meters of water level. On Saturday these maximums have decreased significantly, according to data from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation (CHG). The Junta de Andalucía keeps the Roman Bridge closed, although dozens of curious people have gathered around it to take photos of an unusual image of the Guadalquivir. The eyes of the bridge, its arches, are serving as a measure of the river’s flood. “We came to see how the bridge was, we have seen many photos,” explained a young man from Córdoba. In the minds of all Cordobans is that the disaster does not reach what happened 16 years ago. “If it arrives like in 2010, it will be horrible, but at least there is no family there,” reflects Paqui, a resident of Majaneque.
Seville has also spent the day waiting for the Guadalquivir and the Genil, with both flows at their limit due to the storm, in a province with the most delicate situation in the riverside municipalities. In the capital, the river reached 4.63 meters and went into red notice, although the City Council called for calm and denied overflows, despite the entry of water into plant areas of Expo 92. The Consistory demanded that LaLiga suspend the Seville-Girona match, which was finally cancelled, like the Cádiz-Almería match. In the province as a whole there are about 180 evicted people, the majority in Écija, where the Genil remains at the red level and the council warns that “from 6.50 meters onwards measures must be taken to prevent imminent flooding.” In El Palmar de Troya, around twenty residents have been evacuated, as the lower neighborhoods next to the Torre del Águila dam flooded again.
In the province of Cádiz, the evacuees number in the thousands, with two focuses: the 2,200 in Jerez and. Added to both is the worrying situation in Ubrique, with 80 evicted, which could be more throughout the night, and the river of the same name invading the steep streets of its historic center. But a window of optimism has also opened after the Bornos and Arcos reservoirs, already relieved by the discharges, have been able to laminate new avenues of water over the flooded areas of the Jerez countryside, where there are now concerns that downtown streets will be flooded.
The attention in the province of Malaga – with half a thousand people evacuated – has focused on Ronda, under an orange warning throughout Saturday due to rain and strong gusts of wind. The focus was on the Montejaque dam, close to its capacity limit and with the possibility that the water will end up discharging into the Guadiaro, which is still at the red level, after passing through the Gato-Hundidero cave system. On the way, the Benaoján Station, where a hundred residents are being evacuated preventively. Added to this scenario are the tremors and noises in the subsoil perceived in several municipalities of the Serranía de Ronda, which the authorities frame as the normality of an episode of prolonged rains. Incidents on roads due to landslides and lack of drinking water in Cortes de la Frontera are also accumulating. Downstream of the river, the emergency device in El Secadero is reinforced due to the risk of new isolations and attention is coordinated to San Martín del Tesorillo (Cádiz), where a hundred residents were evacuated due to the rising flow.
In Granada, the storm has left 388 people evicted. At the same time that Huétor Tájar began to see the water withdraw from its streets, the north of the province, especially the Castril area, was still at red level due to the risk of overflowing, with the El Portillo reservoir close to 100% of its capacity. While in Jaén, the flooding of the Guadalquivir keeps the population in Andújar and Villanueva de la Reina on alert, where the Military Emergency Unit (UMR) coordinates a device against the risk of flooding, while in Sorihuela del Guadalimar the Civil Guard rescued a 68-year-old man after the partial collapse of his home. In addition, the storm has caused a breakdown in a pipeline that supplies more than 100,000 people in La Loma and Las Villas, with an alternative supply activated while repairs are carried out.
Incidents throughout the country
The Government of Extremadura has authorized the voluntary evacuation of the districts of Gévora, Novelda and Sagrajas, belonging to Badajoz, given the possibility that they will be cut off for between one and eight hours due to the flooding of the rivers, whose peak is expected between 2:00 and 6:00 in the morning. To guarantee care during a possible isolation, an extraordinary medical device has been activated with health personnel and support from the Red Cross. The storm continues to affect the region unevenly: while in the province of Badajoz the rains have been less than expected; In Cáceres, intense rainfall and strong gusts of wind continue, which have reached up to 96 kilometers per hour in some points. The authorities maintain surveillance in areas such as Coria and Moraleja (Cáceres).
In the Community of Madrid, the Tajo Hydrographic Confederation maintains the red warning activated due to the risk of overflowing in several sections of the Jarama, Alberche and Henares rivers due to the rains of Storm Marta, with effects in points of Ciempozuelos, Mejorada-San Fernando de Henares, San Sebastián de los Reyes, San Fernando de Henares, Patones, Aldea del Fresno and Alcalá de Henares. Meanwhile, the Government Delegation in Madrid asks the population for maximum caution and warns that several levels exceed the alert thresholds, with Manzanares at the yellow level and rising in the capital.
The passage of Storm Marta through the center of the peninsula continues to feed the already saturated flows of the Tagus basin, with special impact in Talavera de la Reina, where fifteen homes in the Entretorres area continue to drain water from garages and basements due to the rise of the river and the water table after the discharges in La Portiña and Cazalegas. The Talavera de la Reina City Council has distributed 2,744 sandbags and bilge pumps, while the mayor, José Julián Gregorio, acknowledged that the situation is “complicated”, although he sent a message of “calm, tranquility and peace”. The concern has also extended to the Guadiana basin, where Civil Protection has sent Es-Alert notices to municipalities near Bullaque after the opening of the spillways of the Torre de Abraham reservoir, the largest in the province of Ciudad Real, although no damage to nearby populations is contemplated.
In Castilla y León, the passage of the storm has been marked by , who died this Saturday afternoon when his vehicle plunged down a 20-meter slope in the port of El Pico, south of the province of Ávila. The areas most affected by the bad weather continue to be those in the northwest of the community, with roads in León and Zamora damaged by snow. In Madrid, he has reported the death of a woman of about 35 years old after the collision of her car with a snow plow, on the A1, at kilometer 82, in Serna del Monte.
