The inhabitants of Jerez hold their breath because the river that crosses the city, the Guadaleteit can overflow. Indeed, the reservoir of the neighboring marsh is almost full and must release water.
As the mayor of the municipality of Cádiz explained, María José García-Pelayothe reservoir is “about 30 hours” away from reaching its limit if it continues to rain as it has so far. This is why Civil Protection has been activated to avoid any risk of the river overflowing.
The discharge, according to local authorities, will release between 6,000 and 10,000 hectometers of water. This flow will go directly to Guadaletea river already very swollen due to the rains which flooded the streets of Jerez this Wednesday.
“It rains a lot in Grazalema, it doesn’t stop raining in the mountains and all this water is coming to us. Yes, plus is being unloaded in Arcos“, we have the possibility that in about 30 hours we could receive the excessive flow that is currently occurring and that we could have an overflow problem in the Guadalete River when it passes through our city”, warned the mayor.
The most serious problems are expected in places like The Pachecasa neighborhood in a rural area of the city of Cádiz. This is where the assistance services would go first to evacuate residents in the event of the river overflowing.
Flooded streets
The mayor added that the municipality continues to have flooded streets. Now the work is, in addition to finishing normalize roads full of water, assess the damage caused.
With this assessment, García-Pelayo said, damages could be claimed if aid funds are established for the slabs affected by the DANAwhich hit Jerez particularly hard.
“We don’t just think about damage to infrastructure that belongs to municipalities, rural neighborhoods or districts, but we also have to think about agricultural damage,” he said. Garcia-Pelayowho said that “if damages are included in the appeal, obviously we will be there.”
Regarding the incidents, he reported that there were 177 incidents transferred until Thursday, in addition to 31 from the Civil Protection and 59 from the Fire Brigade, figures that can change “at the minute”.
Firefighters
However, “as was stated yesterday in the fire department reportnone of them were exceptionally serious”, and that “we did not reach the danger zone, except in the particular situations of certain people who experienced delicate moments”.
“We must be proactive and not take risks,” the mayor asked citizens before a day where they stay in yellow alert until 6:00 p.m.
Furthermore, he announced a reinforcement of the municipal workforce by 50 people throughout the weekend to continue working on cleaning tasks in the city, as well as on the environment. Aqualia will also strengthen its workforce and there will also be a strengthening of Infrastructure and Mobility staff, according to the mayor and reported by Europa Press.
Among the most complicated situations experienced this Thursday in Jerez, the temporary expulsion of around thirty families from Guadalcacín stands out, due to flooding in their homes, which They were able to return home at night.
In addition, there was a traffic collapse due to the flooding of several important streets in the center and other parts of the city like Cuatro Caminos or La Granja.
“Fear”
“I’m going to stay on the positive, it’s true that a lot of families had scares, that’s there, but we’re going to stay on the positive and that’s that the streets were flooded for about an hour and a half” , declared the mayor.
For García-Pelayo, this means that the city’s collection system “works well” because “this water was immediately sucked in, evacuated naturally and there was no need to resort to Aqualia to will drain the streets”.
As he assured, this means that “we have collectors who are clean”, and that even if yesterday we saw photos “of a lady having a bad time”, he estimated that “an hour and a half later, there was no more water.” at all.” “We are going to promote the positive, we are going to emphasize that we respond and that the streets also reacted appropriately and emptied very quickly.
