Storm Adam Dumps 500 Liters on Gandia, Leaving Cars Stranded in Flooded Streets Near the Beach

Residents waded through floodwater around parked cars and garages near Gandia’s beach on Monday morning, October 19, after Storm Adam dropped around 500 liters of rain per square meter on the Valencian resort in little more than a day.

Local resident Juan Alberto Morant filmed the flooding from inside a vehicle with its hazard lights flashing as the rain kept falling. In the first clip, water pools in a sloping driveway outside a building’s garage, reaching the wheels of a dark Mercedes as an older man climbs out into the water and another person stands by the open driver’s door, while a neighbor watches from a dry walkway under an umbrella. In the second, the vehicle pushes a bow wave down a residential street that is flooded from wall to wall, with water halfway up the wheels of the parked cars on both sides and a scooter lying on its side, almost completely underwater. A photo he took shows two men in shorts, knee-deep in the water, bent over the front of the same car.

The city council said around 500 liters per square meter had fallen on the city and its beach between Sunday and the early hours of Monday, flooding many streets, rural roads and routes into the city, including residential areas close to the sea. It asked people to stay at home and avoid going to work if they could. Classes were suspended in every school, local buses stopped running and parks and sports facilities were closed, while officials kept a close watch on the Serpis river and the Beniopa ravine. Police also rescued a 93-year-old woman from her home in Gandia using a paddleboard after the water inside had risen to around one and a half meters.

The rain fell on a city that has now flooded four times in 13 months. Across the surrounding La Safor district and the neighboring Marina Alta, Storm Adam left more than 700 liters per square meter in places, swelled rivers past their banks and trapped people on rooftops and on top of their cars. The Valencian government confined 145 municipalities, and helicopters plucked stranded residents to safety, especially in nearby Oliva. Regional emergencies chief Juan Carlos Valderrama said the downpour was the third most intense ever recorded in the Valencia region and that more than 1,000 rescues had been carried out by air and on the ground.

The storm has been blamed for three deaths in the Valencia region. In Oliva, the body of a 79-year-old woman with reduced mobility was found in her home, and a 64-year-old man was found dead at a campsite. A woman’s body was found on Sunday on a beach in Sagunto after she was swept away by the sea, and a fourth person died in Barcelona.