There is a lack of younger people in my town at the moment because they have either gone to the nearby towns or to Valencia City to help. La 1 is running a programme showing the clean up. They are talking to professionals and volunteers in all the different areas that the work is occurring.. Volunteers are told to wear masks and gloves as it is a dangerous job doing this type of clean up. Volunteers are working alongside firemen and the army. Saddest sight is the firemen searching for the dead. One scene showed them discretely removing 8 dead people from a garage The loss of life is so, so sad.

Rosemary

A bit of good news on the N332 page.

A person has just been rescued from inside her car where she was for three days stuck in an underpass in the Valencian town of Benetússer.
There is hope for the families of the other missing people!

Rosemary

Let's hope for more miracles!

Poor lady - 3 days!!!

BBC reporting -

Woman rescued after three days trapped inside car published at 17:27

17:27A woman has been rescued from her car after flash floods trapped her inside the vehicle for three days, the head of the Civil Protection in the Valencian Community says.

Martín Pérez confirmed the woman was found in Benetússer, a municipality 29 minutes south of Valencia. Pérez adds she was then taken to hospital.

Thousands more troops are being despatched to Valencia, in the biggest peacetime deployment in Spain's history.

Spain floods disaster: 5,000 more troops drafted in to deal with aftermath | Spain | The Guardian

BBC just announced 10,000!

10.000 combined number of troops and police.

As reported by N332 in my post 3 hours earlier. Would have been lovely if this had been another survivor but sadly it is not.

Rosemary

In a short break from the cleaning a whole street of workers sang the Valencian Anthem, lovely to hear them singing with such vigour.

Rosemary

Starting the fifth day and I can't believe that the suburbs outside of Valencia still don't have the military. 10-15km outside of Valencia city and they're still like they were on first day. I really hope this has political repercussions, unfortunately it could very well be more votes for Vox (those that wanted to get rid of Aemet).

The size of this tragedy is so massive that it is literally impossible to coordinate and to plan a big enough response. I was watching this unfold on Tuesday morning from about 6.00am. I was warning folk that something unbelievable was happening but people just seemed to think it was just a case of bad flooding. Tuesday at my work was a Halloween party and no one was really taking it seriously. It was only by the end of Wednesday that people realized what had happened. It is only by Friday that it has become clear how much planning is really needed and given that the local communidad of PP and Vox had actually dismantled the original emergency respons plans hasn't helped so I don't see why people would vote for Vox who actually deny climate change!

I had become very fed up with all of the short videos on social media that showed silly little set pieces being acted out. But the videos of the flooding from the beginning has provided a huge insight into how rapidly cars were swept away. Now the videos show everyone pulling together to rectify the situation. Co-ordinating this is a logistical nightmare of a huge proportion.

Many town halls have been castigated for the lack of warnings about the weather prior to this happening and for their lack of immediate response to the event afterwards. My town hall was very forward thinking about the strength of the storms and had cancelled all social events. The warnings received were good and informative and this has continued throughout. Personally I believe that this is because the vast majority of the people in the town hall are locals which makes them well connected to the citizens at an emotional level so they provide the human touch. As soon as the storms began I was receiving countless messages from them and this has continued the whole time.

Rosemary

The issue about the timing of warnings will no doubt be debated in the coming months. What we do know is that even the experts couldn't know the level of destruction nor the quantity of water that would be deposited in such a limited area. That couldn't be known because they aren't able to monitor things like water saturation levels in the atmosphere, well at least not in real time. So blame is not a good way to deal with this. What is needed is the construction of a new response plan to deal with this size of flooding. What is inevitable is it is going to happen again ( like the fires) and people need to not think that it is simply a blip. The other issue is cost. They say this will take nearly half the year to remedy things maybe more - as at the moment Valencia is quite simply switched off to nearly all commercial activity. So economically this is a big blow.
They are also considering looking at the issue of cars as one of the primary problems is car debris which is hampering operations. Plus many who lost their lives were either in cars or went to garages to move their cars. Alsoany vehicle are so big that is also an issue.

. Las autoridades identifican 160 ARPSIs en las cuencas mediterráneas de Andalucía, 46 en la cuenca del Ebro, 42 en las cuencas interiores de Cataluña, 30 en la del Júcar, 22 en la del Segura, en las que se extienden poblaciones desde Mojácar en Almería, Murcia o Lorca; Elche, Denia o Santa Pola en Alicante o Gandía y Sagunto en Valencia, hasta el Delta del Ebro, que donde las zonas de riesgo de inundación se remontan mucho más al interior y al norte, hasta Lleida Tudela (Navarra) .

This was in today's paper. These are areas that are said to be high risk areas for future flooding from DANAs

ARPSI stands for what?