Floodwater Creeps Into Home in Spanish Coastal Town as Night Brings Fresh Downpour

Floodwater rose steadily around a family home in the town of Oliva in eastern Spain on Sunday, October 18, as Storm Adam’s torrential rain kept falling for hour after hour, hours before the storm turned deadly in the town.

Virginia Zapater filmed the scene at her home in two videos taken about four hours apart. In the first, posted just before 6 p.m., she walks across a covered porch and along a garden that has completely disappeared under water, with leaves floating on the flooded courtyard and the water lapping at the base of the porch step. When she holds the camera up over the front wall, the street outside has turned into a fast-flowing brown river. “Four hours later, it’s still raining and it now covers half of the entrance,” she wrote. In the second clip, filmed through a window after dark, heavy rain roars down and pours off a wooden roof in a sheet of water next to a parked car. “It’s starting to rain hard again, and now that night is coming, the stress and anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen begins,” she wrote.

The Valencia region’s weather agency said 71.2 liters per square meter had already fallen in Oliva’s town center by 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, and local police closed seven roads because of flooding. Regional emergency services warned that more very persistent rain was expected overnight on Sunday into Monday over already saturated ground in the La Safor and Marina Alta districts, raising the risk of rivers and ravines overflowing. Two emergency phone alerts went out to residents early on Monday, at 5:35 a.m. and 7 a.m.

The rain did not let up. A regional weather station network recorded about 643 liters per square meter in Oliva over 48 hours, more than the town normally gets in a full year, with similar totals in neighboring towns such as Pego and Gandia. On Monday, rescue teams found the body of a 79-year-old woman on the ground floor of her home, where her niece was found alive, and a 64-year-old man reportedly died of a heart attack at a flooded campsite in the town. A woman had earlier died on a beach in Sagunto, bringing the region’s death toll from the storm to three. The regional government ordered residents of 145 municipalities in the provinces of Valencia and Alicante to stay at home, and schools in Oliva, Gandia and other towns in the area were closed on Monday.