Brewing up a storm?
After 29 October of this year many more people, (particularly in Spain) will, one suspects, have become a lot more familiar with the acronym DANA. It stands for Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos (Isolated Depression at High Altitudes).
A DANA is a rather unique meteorological phenomenon, often experienced at this time of the year on the Iberian peninsula. It begins with a large slow-moving mass of circulating cold air, breaking off from the jet stream and settling over the peninsula at an altitude of about 9,000 metres. What then happens is that warm air sucking in moisture from the Mediterranean is forced upwards by mountain ranges and collides with the cold air above, precipitating a torrential downpour mainly along the Mediterranean coastline.
Temperatures are a critical factor. According to the World Meteorological Organization website:
‘For each 1°C of warming, saturated air contains 7 percent more water vapour on average. Every additional fraction of warming therefore increases the atmospheric moisture content which in turn increases the risk of extreme precipitation events’ (31 October).
Friederike Otto of the World Weather Attribution organisation argues that climate change has made extreme rainfall 12 percent more intense and twice as likely (Guardian, 4 November). This is something we had better get more used to, she suggests. We need to build more resilience to deal with events like 29 Oct – better infrastructure, more effective early warning systems and so on.
But, of course, in capitalism this boils down to spending money on something that doesn’t yield a financial return; predictably, it will meet some resistance. What seems like just plain commonsense has to constantly do battle against financial priorities and short-term thinking just to reach some sort of compromise.
Aggravating factors
In any event, it would seem that people in those parts of Spain affected by the storm of 29 October had not really been prepared for what happened. Of course, it was expected that there would be heavy rainfall since this is what normally happens around this time of the year in this part of the world. What was not expected was the sheer intensity. AEMET, the national weather forecasting service had, as early as 25 October, issued a warning but this had been largely ignored and apparently, even ridiculed by climate change denialists as ‘alarmism’ (‘October 2024 Spain floods’, Wikipedia).
It’s not just atmospheric temperature that matters, so too does sea temperature since this affects the take-up of moisture into the atmosphere. Since the 1980s, the Mediterranean has warmed up by about 1.5 degrees. Water, of course, retains heat longer than land so this has implications not only for the intensity of precipitation but, also, the timing of DANA events (in the past, they were more common in September or early October).
As one commentator explained, it takes just a tiny increase in the sea´s temperature to make a big difference: ‘The DANA encountered water temperatures around 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) off the coast of Valencia, while the usual temperature for this time of year is around 70 F (21 C). That difference may seem small, but it is enough to supply the storm system with extra energy’.
The storm that followed caused a truly unprecedented amount of damage – most particularly to communities in the autonomous region of Valencia but also in areas as far afield as Andalucia and Castilla-La Mancha. Some communities received a year’s worth of rain in the course of a few hours. The impact of this enormous volume of water in such a short space of time was made worse because of the recent drought, making the soil hard and unable to absorb the water rapidly enough.
Other aggravating factors included vegetation loss, inappropriate farming techniques and rampant urbanisation along the Mediterranean coastline, covering the land with impermeable surfaces. Speculative building projects have resulted in housing units being constructed ridiculously close to old water courses prone to periodic flooding.
As of early November, we still do not know the full extent of the damage, but the tragedy has already been dubbed Europe’s worst flood-related disaster since 1967. The death toll is currently 217 and rising. There are still many more people unaccounted for and reported missing
Rescue teams have been searching for bodies in underground car parks such as the Bonaire shopping mall near Valencia airport, as well as river mouths where currents may have deposited bodies. Additionally, at the time of writing, there are still many flooded underpasses and basements that have yet to be inspected, not to mention remote rural locations.
It is not just the lives lost and damaged that define this tragedy. The physical destruction has been catastrophic: houses washed away or structurally weakened, countless roads blocked or partially destroyed, bridges broken up and swept away like mere matchstick structures.
Video clips have revealed the fearsome sight of enormous volumes of fast-flowing water gouging out the sides of once bone-dry barrancos or carrying countless cars down narrow streets, along with the flotsam, to some final resting place where scores of them can be found piled up like metal corpses in what are perhaps some of the most hauntingly emblematic images of this whole dreadful event.
Beyond the urban areas, thousands of hectares of crops have been seriously affected. In Almeria’s greenhouse belt that supplies a significant fraction of the UK´s fresh vegetables, initial estimates suggested at least 4,500 hectares of greenhousing have been seriously damaged by hailstones–the plastic shredded beyond hope of repair.
Pent-up anger
Very understandably, all this is has aroused a great deal of anger among local people. In quite extraordinary scenes, the Spanish monarchs, along with the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, were pelted with insults and lumps of the ubiquitous mud that cakes the streets of the towns they visited. Accused of being ‘assassins’ they prudently decided to cut short their scheduled tour of the area.
Predictably, political opportunists have waded into the fray with far-right elements, like supporters of Vox, protesting against the Sanchez government for its inexplicable tardiness in sending in the army to help. For their part, leftwing groups like Podemos, have called for the resignation of the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón of the conservative People’s Party, not least because of his decision last year to scrap the Valencia Emergency Unit (UVE) as a ‘superfluous expense’. The UVE was set up to respond to emergencies precisely like the current one, but such is the stupidity of short-term thinking that it is only with hindsight that we can now appreciate its potential value.
Much criticism levelled at the authorities has focused on the question of why people were not alerted sooner to give them more time to reach high ground and safety. According to an Al Jazeera report (3 November): ‘When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps’.
AEMET, as mentioned, knew of the approaching storm and issued a yellow warning a few days before it broke. On 29 October, it converted this into a red warning:
‘AEMET issued a red alert level warning very early on Tuesday, the day of the Dana, but life pretty much went on as normal until hours later when the torrential rains began to fall, and the rivers began to overflow in inland Valencia’ (4 November, Sur in English).
As that day dragged on and conditions deteriorated Mazón held a press conference at about 13.00 claiming that ‘the storm would dissipate by 18:00’ (Wikipedia). Of course it did no such thing and matters steadily worsened. Only by 20:11 did the Generalitat Valenciana issue a general SMS alert to the public to stay indoors while around midnight on 30 October, ‘Mazón’s social media team deleted a tweet claiming the storm would dissipate’. Astonishingly, Mazón also apparently rejected offers of help from firefighters in Catalonia, Navarre and Bilbao.
It was not just the regional government that was at fault. Many businesses in the area adamantly insisted that their employees turn up for work that day and in the evening, despite the obviously deteriorating circumstances, thereby putting the latter´s lives at risk. That speaks volumes.
Political bickering
Of course, it is all too easy to get embroiled in the blame game when it comes to ‘natural tragedies’ when we should really be focusing on the wider picture. Strangely, though, weather forecasters are often the first to cop the blame. One recalls the famous gaffe by the BBC weather forecaster, Michael Fish, in 1987 on the eve of the Great Storm reassuring his viewers that there was no hurricane on the horizon, (though as an afterthought he suggested it might become ‘quite windy’). One truly feels for poor Mr Fish and the backlash he endured but predicting the weather has never been an exact science.
Blaming the weather forecaster is precisely what seems to have happened on this occasion as well – except that AEMET actually got its forecast spot on. That did not stop Alberto Feijoo, leader of the Popular Party, springing to the defence of his comrade Carlos Mazón and, in desperate need of a scapegoat, claiming that AEMET had not forewarned the public sufficiently promptly (31 October, elDiario.es ).
Undoubtedly, the descent into political bickering and backbiting has hampered efforts to deal with the situation. It has also provoked a huge amount of public anger at the ‘political class’ – not just over the delay in warning people but also because of the delay in responding with practical help.
A complicating factor is that Spain has a relatively decentralised system of regional government. There are protocols to be followed as to when central government can become directly involved in the affairs of regional governments and Mazón seemingly dragged his feet when it came to formally raising the official crisis level which would have automatically triggered central government involvement. Of course, when the latter did get involved it was already too late, in the view of many.
In any event this all set the scene for what has been the one truly positive and outstanding development to emerge from this whole sorry saga – the awe-inspiring and magnificent efforts of ordinary working people to handle the situation themselves. Unwilling to wait any longer for the authorities to take action they themselves set about the monumental task of rescuing others, locating bodies and cleaning up. Even those who had lost everything.
Wave of solidarity
The mobilised power of mutual aid is indeed a wonderful and inspirational sight to behold. There are videos circulating on the internet of truly enormous columns of volunteers – thousands upon thousands of people – buckets and mops in hand, trudging on foot from one part of Valencia to another (travel by car being impossible and, at the time of writing, forbidden by the authorities).
This spontaneous voluntary effort originated in social media – for example among groups of young Telegram users – as a bottom-up initiative. Predictably, this has not stopped the authorities from muscling in on the act:
‘From now on, all the organisation is in the hands of the Generalitat. A “wave of solidarity” that needs “coordination”, said Mazón in an institutional message. “We are doing this to better organise, transport and segment the aid of those who are lending their solidarity”’ (2 November, Sur in English).
That smacks of the typical politician trying to save his bacon while claiming the kudos for what others have done. Nevertheless it won´t detract from what the latter have shown themselves amply capable of achieving as working people – not ordinary but extraordinary.
ROBIN COX