Spain floods latest: Dogs being used in search for missing people as ‘stick-wielding’ vigilantes patrol streets – UK Times

Spain’s central government approved a 10.6-billion-euro (£8.9 billion) relief package for 78 communities on Tuesday that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez compared with measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They include direct payments of 20,000 euros to 60,000 euros to owners of damaged homes, among other financial aid for businesses and municipal governments.

“We have a lot of work left to do, and we know it,” Mr Sanchez said.

Mr Sanchez said he will ask the European Union to help pay for the relief.

Satellite imagery has revealed before and after views of the disastrous Valencia floods. It shows green plains turned into a deluge of mud.

Spanish banks have a loan exposure of about 20 billion euros ($21.80 billion) in areas worst-hit by floods, but will be able to absorb the shock, a Bank of Spain official said on Tuesday, adding climate risks were materialising faster than thought. At least 217 people died and many are still unaccounted for in the worst flooding in decades in Spain.

“This is a shock that, for a financial system, a banking system such as the one in Spain, is something that can be absorbed,” Angel Estrada, the bank’s head of financial stability, said.

Estrada said that Spanish banks’ exposures to areas worst hit by floods in the regions of Valencia, Andalusia, Castile La Mancha and Catalonia would rise to around 13 billion euros in loans to households and around 7 billion euros to companies.

Presenting the central bank’s financial stability report, Estrada said these were the total exposures and would “not all materialise into losses”.

In total, the central bank has identified 23,000 companies with outstanding loans and 472,000 loan holders in those regions, of which 150,000 were mortgage contracts on which the banks are already offering loan moratoriums.

The head of financial stability said it was still too early to assess the economic impact of the floods though acknowledged that there had been a more “significant destruction of capital” compared to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also said it was imperative to implement measures to help the worst affected cope with the situation and boost a fast economic recovery.

Estrada also noted that the floods in Spain had shown climate change was happening faster than previously expected and that banks should focus on measuring physical risks not just transition risks. The European Central Bank has long complained that banks are not meeting its supervisory expectations on climate change and has begun issuing fine notices to lenders not meeting its long-defined expectations on disclosing climate risks.

Don Turner, 78, and his wife Terry, 74, had not been seen since Tuesday, when torrential rains began to batter Valencia. Ms Turner had told friends that they were “popping out” to shop for supplies.

The couple’s daughter, Ruth O’Loughlin, confirmed the bodies were discovered on Saturday. Ms O’Loughlin told BBC Radio WM that she found out her parents had died after receiving a message from their friends asking to call them.

The king’s comments came during a visit to the epicentre of their nation’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory, where a crowd of enraged locals hurled clots of mud left by the storm-spawned flooding at Felipe VI and his wife Queen Letizia.

Spain’s national guard on Tuesday asked relatives of people missing in deadly floods to provide DNA samples to identify bodies, as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he was earmarking 10.6 billion euros ($11.6 billion) to help victims.

The government has declined to say how many people are missing almost a week on from the disaster. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said only that it was a “significant number” and that in the absence of clear information, it was “best not to specify”.

Francisco Murgui went out to try to salvage his motorbike when the water started to rise. He never came back. One week after catastrophic flooding devasted eastern Spain, Maria Murgui still holds out hope that her father is alive and among the unknown number of the missing. “He was like many people in town who went out to get their car or motorbike to safety,” the 27-year-old told The Associated Press. “The flash flood caught him outside, and he had to cling to a tree in order to escape drowning. He called us to tell us he was fine, that we shouldn’t worry.”

But when Maria set out into the streets to try to rescue him from the water washing away everything in its path, he was nowhere to be found. “He held up until 1 in the morning,” she said. “By 2, I went outside with a neighbor and a rope to try to locate him. But we couldn’t find him. And since then, we haven’t heard anything about him.”

Floods left cars piled up like toys in streets, swallowed homes, and covered entire neighbourhoods in sludge as authorities report 217 fatalities

Spanish public health experts have warned over immediate health risks associated with stagnant floodwaters and decomposing bodies.

The Ministry of Health has insisted that water contamination from dead animals or humans is not currently a public health issue.

However, residents remain at high risk over gastrointestinal illnesses from drinking contaminated water, injuries from debris, and the proliferation of mosquitoes spreading diseases.

Public health societies, emergency response teams, and NGOs are currently working on the ground in the most affected areas like Paiporta and Chiva in Valencia to ensure the safety and hygiene of residents.

With dozens more feared to be dead, health officials have called local authorities to speed up search of bodies and clean-up operations to prevent further risks.