‘We had no evacuation plan’: Scottish teacher in Valencia during devastating flash floods

A Scottish teacher living in Valencia says she hears sirens “all day long” after flash floods hit southern Spain, killing around 155 people.

Lucy Begley, from Greenock, who works as a teacher at an English-medium primary school in the city, said it had been a “sad experience” since the floods began.

Authorities said at least 155 people were killed and others missing after floods hit large parts of eastern and southern Spain.

This is the worst natural disaster to hit Spain in recent years.

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Footage from Valencia showed muddy water pouring through the streets, sweeping away cars and disrupting rail services.

The 29-year-old was sent home from work on Tuesday due to bad weather, with villages and towns in the city center hardest hit by flash floods.

She told STV News: “There was no evacuation plan but all I heard all day was sirens.

“The people of Valencia are really angry with the government because apparently all this was predicted about 15 hours in advance.

“By the time we got the message on our phones to come inside and stay safe, people were already trapped and stranded.”

She added: “At the moment you can’t get to Madrid, there is no metro in the city center.

“All main roads into and out of the city are blocked. If you go north you can leave, but I think it would be very difficult.

“I had no evacuation plan.

“My family and friends have contacted us and are really worried because there have been false reports in the media about where the hit occurred.

“I have a friend who is missing. The next day, she managed to contact her family through someone else’s phone.

“Another friend is still stuck in her city (outside of town) without water. The road to the city was destroyed.

“Three of my friends were stuck in their cars overnight. It was a very sad experience.”

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One Glaswegian affected by the floods, who is holidaying with her family in Arboleas, described the storm as “terrifying”.

She said: “It was colder here on Monday than in Glasgow.

“It was a dry river that flooded. It very quickly filled with fast flowing water and was quite scary.

“There were policemen standing on both sides of the bridge over the river to make sure no one tried to cross the other side. We haven’t had water here for two days.

“Galassa or Ayuntimiento organized a water tanker that stood on our main street in the village where we could collect fresh water. It’s an inconvenience, but we don’t complain.

“The rain started around 4pm on Monday and was soon followed by thunderstorms which continued throughout the night.

“The lightning was powerful and lit up the sky. It would have been great to watch, but we had the shutters and blinds closed so our dog wouldn’t be too disturbed.

“It was a terrible storm, but we survived. We are very happy compared to Valencia, where the death toll is huge.”

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Spain’s worst natural disaster this century has left a trail of destruction and fears that even more horrors will be uncovered beneath the layers of mud left by the walls of water.

An unknown number of people remain missing.

“Unfortunately, there are bodies in some of the vehicles,” said Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente.

The extensive destruction resembles the aftermath of a hurricane or tsunami.

Cars drove into each other, trees were uprooted, power lines were downed and household items became stuck in the mud, covering streets in dozens of communes in the worst-hit Valencia region, where at least 92 people died.

Regional authorities said late Wednesday that no one was left alone on roofs or in cars in need of help after helicopters rescued about 70 people.

“Our priority is to find the victims and missing people so that we can help end the suffering of their families,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said after meeting with regional officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days of mourning. .

In Paiporta, a community of 25,000 people near Valencia, Mayor Maribel Albalat said 62 people had died.

“(Paiporta) has never had a flood, we have never had this kind of problem. We found a lot of elderly people in the city center,” Albalat told national broadcaster RTVE.

“There were also a lot of people who came to pull cars out of garages… it was a real trap.”

Although the most damage was done to municipalities near Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury on wide areas of the southern and eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

Two deaths were reported in the neighboring Castilla-La Mancha region and one in southern Andalusia.

Castilla-La Mancha regional president Emilion García-Page said at least one Guardia Civil police officer was among several people missing in the city of Letur.

Houses were left without water as far as Malaga in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday evening. None of the almost 300 passengers were hurt.

The storms produced a tornado in Valencia and a hailstorm that riddled cars in Andalusia.

Further north, Spanish rain continued to fall on Thursday when the Spanish weather agency issued a red alert for several counties in Castellon in the eastern region of Valencia and Tarragona in Catalonia.

“This storm front is still with us,” the Prime Minister said. “Stay at home and follow official advice and you will help save lives.”

More than 1,000 soldiers from Spanish rescue units joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors.

By Wednesday evening, soldiers had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people.

“We are searching house by house,” Angel Martinez, from a military rescue unit in the town of Utiel, where at least six people have died, told Spanish radio broadcaster RNE.

Spanish news agency EFE reported that about 150,000 residents of Valencia were without electricity on Wednesday, but by Thursday about half had electricity.

An unknown number had no running water and relied on available bottled water.

The region remained partially isolated, with several roads cut off and rail lines disrupted, including a high-speed line to Madrid that officials said would not be repaired for two to three weeks.

Spain’s weather service said more rain fell in eight hours in the Valencian city of Chiva than in the previous 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”