Malaga is in suspense regarding the development of DANA in the coming hours. After overcoming the first impact without bodily harm, the mood within the Andalusian government was one of concern about the weather forecast for the night. AEMET updated the red notice until Friday 8:00 a.m. and President Juan Manuel Moreno canceled his presence at the budget debate to travel to Malaga to coordinate the emergency committee meeting.
“The situation continues to be of alert and extreme risk,” warned Antonio Sanz at the end of the meeting of the Operational Committee which manages the response to the emergency, after 8 p.m. “The forecasts remain very risky, to the point that the alert has been reconsidered. There are still big problems and complexities to be resolved,” said the presidential advisor, calling for caution: “There is still a lot to do. It’s not over. It can rain in very humid conditions, so the situation is more alert than yesterday. “There is no time to burn out.”
This risk has led the Andalusian government to extend until Thursday the closure of classrooms already decreed for Wednesday in Malaga, in the Genil basin, in Granada and on the coast of Granada. In addition, the centers of the municipalities of Cádiz, Huelva and Seville affected by the AEMET orange notice will be closed.
More than 1,000 incidents, but no injuries
Sanz took stock of more than 1,000 incidents, including 760 in the province of Malaga. 4,210 people were expelled in the province, the majority on the banks of the Guadalhorce and Campanillas, and around 950 in Almayate (Vélez-Málaga). But beyond the quantitative, there is, in his words, satisfaction for the qualitative: “The results are that there has been no incident with serious consequences either for the health or for the lives of people” .
Sanz emphasized coordination with city halls and central government agencies to overcome the situation. “The coordination with AEMET was perfect.”
In this temporal balance weigh the early warning launched yesterday evening by all possible means (including Es-Alert, which sounded around 11 p.m. – twelve hours before the downpour – on the telephones of 1,300,000 people), the suspension of courses at all educational levels, preventive evacuations and rapid relief of flooded areas. This is what happened with Avenida Andalucía, which went from being flooded with water and mud to becoming clear in just an hour. The situation in the morning was such that there was almost no one on the street. It reminded me of the days of confinement.
Juan Manuel Moreno, president of the Junta de Andalucía, assessed at noon the measures taken, which marks a great distance from the decisions adopted by the Generalitat Valenciana two weeks ago. “Today, Malaga is paralyzed. I know that it is a problem for citizens not to take their children to class, but we act on the basis of rainfall information from AEMET with a fundamental objective, which is to prevent rather than cure. We have already seen it in Valencia. Faced with the prospect of intense rains in a Mediterranean city with basins and mountains, also like Malaga, we try to minimize the impact of DANA.
“Thanks to the fact that many streets were practically deserted, the consequences did not go any further,” Sanz emphasized at night.
Wednesday’s sale
This Wednesday, Malaga suffered a huge downpour. As expected, a huge storm hit the city in the middle of the day. The Guadalmedina, almost always dry, then reached a meter and a half in height and the sloping central streets, like Victoria or Carretería, became streams.
The graphic image was also left by Andalucía Avenue as it crossed El Corte Inglés, transformed there into a raft that trapped buses and cars. For a few hours the overflowing of the Campanillas River (to the west), as always when it rains like this, was taken for granted. And there were fears of dozens of horses drowning at the El Pinar equestrian club. There the water fell with such force that stables in low-lying areas were flooded and messages went around to open the gates with a radio in the face of the power cut. They managed to get them out in time.
The memory of the disastrous floods of 1989, which occurred on November 14, hung in the air. This November 13, it rained heavily but the city avoided disaster, at least in the afternoon, so everyone was feeling their clothes. We still had to wait for the rivers in the eastern zone to resist and face a new downpour expected overnight, after having reached around 90 liters per square meter in 12 hours at the capital’s measuring stations. The storm forced all health centers to close, except emergency points.
In the province, the worst was that of Benamargosa, a small municipality in Axarquía (1,557 inhabitants), whose river of the same name overflowed in the afternoon, flooding houses, businesses and plantations of avocados and mangoes, the main local industry. The river fell to a height of 4.30 meters, with a flow of 425,000 liters per second. A scandal which has exceeded its historical maximum level by more than a meter. In 12 hours, the accumulated rain was 132.5 liters per square meter, enough to exceed the red level. In Alfarnatejo, also in Axarquía, they exceeded 144. In Coín, in the Guadalhorce valley, they reached 119. And in Ojén or Marbella, in the west, they exceeded 80 and 60 respectively. that intense rains affected almost the entire province.
A waterspout off the coast of Marbella caused an impact. Videos of the corridors and laboratory of the Clinical Hospital being flooded (which is not the first time), of water falling in a stream on the hams of the Corte Inglés and of the rescue of a neighbor with water water up to his knees also went viral at a gas station in Héroe de Sostoa.
It was one of the images of the day that left the capital cut off from the train. Renfe has suspended the service of the C-1 line which connects Fuengirola and the Media Distancia service with Seville. The high-speed service with Madrid was also canceled from 1:30 p.m. The María Zambrano station was evacuated in the concourse area and on the platforms. The A-7059 passing through Cártama, the A-7054 and the A-7000 in Málaga and the A-7207 between Cómpeta and Torrox have been closed. The airport canceled fifteen flights and diverted five others to Seville.
I breathe in the middle of the afternoon
By mid-afternoon, the rain took a break and handed it over to the people of Malaga. The Guadalmedina River flowed with a good flow, a rarity that locals and foreigners looked at with astonishment, but the sky opened and walkers stopped on the bridges to immortalize that the river bed was no longer dry . The center regained its tourist flow, not a minute of the trip to lose, even if everything got bogged down.
At that time, the Carretería was a muddy mess. This is ground zero for the devastation this Wednesday in the Center, as well as mass tourism in Malaga. Shortly before, a huge mudslide had flowed down Postigo de Arance Street until it ended a few dozen meters at the confluence with Carretería. Here are the premises of brunchtourist apartments, franchise lockers and laundries. “It reached one meter, and suddenly. Fortunately, we were able to get out,” says Luigi from Caramelli Salato, barely removing the mud.
Marcos Sneydr barely had time to lower the blinds of his premises when he found himself up to his arms in water. In a few minutes, it reached a little less than a meter. As soon as they saw how quickly the temperature was rising, they returned home. A large flowerpot carried away by the current and a 25-liter beer barrel stored in a corner show the waves. They had customers and they chased them away. “It’s a shame that Carretería is like this. They just did it and there should be drains. I understand that the rain was enormous, but… a river was flowing there,” explains Ana López, the owner, pointing to Postigo de Arance, while her son Marcos scoops out the mud that got in.
A broken pipe also had a lot to do with it, which a team of workers quickly took care of. “Nothing happened,” they say: “He blew everything up.” Keep in mind that a canal passes through there,” explains one of them, pointing to the expanse of cobblestones that the force of the current has lifted from the ground.
By mid-afternoon, the damage was being counted in the Center while eyes were turned towards the eastern area, where a handful of generally dry streams flow, and which, with the rains, reject water from the mountains surrounding the city.
