Young Girl Among Hundreds Airlifted From Flooded Spanish Town

Firefighters lifted a young girl down from a rescue helicopter on Monday, October 19, as crews worked nonstop to evacuate residents cut off by Storm Adam’s floods on Spain’s eastern coast. Footage released by the Valencia Provincial Firefighters Consortium shows its MV6-R helicopter and specialist height rescue team flying people out of isolated homes, while ground and water crews waded through fast-flowing floodwater.

The video opens on a flooded parking lot where rushing brown water reaches the headlights of half-submerged cars and has flattened a metal fence. In the rain, a yellow and red helicopter comes in to land on a muddy lot, guided by firefighters in yellow jackets, and rescuers in red helmets crowd around its door to lift down a little girl in a pink jacket. Two firefighters in red drysuits then wade through knee-deep water beside an orange orchard, holding a yellow pole between them to keep their footing against the current. Later, paramedics help an evacuee into a wheelchair outside Oliva’s multipurpose center, which became the landing point for rescue helicopters, as fire trucks and rescue vehicles move in and out through flooded roads.

The firefighters said many homes in Oliva and the wider La Safor area were completely cut off. By 3 p.m., they estimated they had rescued more than 300 people, about 150 of them in some 60 helicopter rescues and around 160 in 80 rescues by land and water. Helicopters from the military emergency unit, the regional government, forest firefighters, the National Police and Maritime Rescue also took part, and one Maritime Rescue crew winched 19 people, including a child and a baby, and a dog from the rooftops. “When I got out of bed, the water was up to my knees,” said Ana Llorca, who was flown out with her children and her dog.

About 200 people were trapped in Oliva’s beach area and outlying homes on Monday morning, and some 2,000 were evacuated from seven campsites. Valencian regional president Juanfran Pérez Llorca asked those still waiting for “a great deal of patience” as rescues went on through the day. Storm Adam has killed three people in the region, two in Oliva and one in Sagunto, and a fourth death was reported in Barcelona.