After the severe storm that hit the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, part of Castile-La Mancha, Almería and Murcia this Tuesday, which has caused the death of almost 100 people and left dozens missing, as well as incalculable material damage, more rain and heavy storms have been forecast in other places.
In the province of Valencia, which has borne the brunt of the storm, there have been reports of flooded roads, some of which have even collapsed, thousands of vehicles floating and swept away by the current, tornadoes, heavy hail, people trapped by water in different locations, road and air traffic cuts, hundreds of hectares of citrus, kaki and vegetable crops flooded, as well as flooded packing plants and countless amounts of damage.
The second degree cooperative Anecoop, which represents a large number of cooperatives in the worst affected areas in Valencia, told us about how they are going through this horrible experience and the impact it is having on the sector and its commercial activity, now that the harvesting season is fully underway for kakis and citrus fruits.
"It is still too early to evaluate the actual extent of the damage, but what is clear is that it will be massive," says Anecoop Sales Director Miguel Abril. "In our cooperatives in Almeria, where more than 4,500 hectares of greenhouses were affected by the hail, activity has already been resumed, but in Valencia, in the districts of La Ribera and L'Horta Sud, practically all our packing plants are still closed, with the exception of a couple of them," he says.
📲Since the start of the #temporalLevante #Dana yesterday until this afternoon, half a thousand calls have been received on the 112 emergency telephone number.
- Emergències 112CV (@GVA112) October 29, 2024
Pictures of the aftermath of the storm in many areas of the Utiel-Requena region, where the force of the water has swept away... pic.twitter.com/cN4uBt9egy
"Some power stations have been flooded and others are struggling with the electricity supply," Abril says. "The kaki harvest, which is now in full swing, as well as the citrus fruit harvest, has come to a complete halt due to the impossibility of accessing flooded fields. Also, roads have been cut off and some of them are full of wrecked vehicles, so it is almost impossible for any kind of logistics to function, despite the fact that we have goods stored in the warehouses."
"Commercial activity is minimal, as far as the products mentioned above is concerned, as orders and programs cannot be completed. We don't know yet when normality will be restored in Valencia, but it will happen gradually," says the Anecoop Sales Director. "In addition to the crops that have been lost directly, we will later have to see the impact of the excess humidity on the crops."
In the meantime, it has also rained in Castellon and it continues to rain in Murcia, with some occasional instances of hail, but the damage is much more limited compared to Valencia. "In Murcia, there have been some hail incidents in Lorca and, in general, the harvesting of open ground vegetables has been slowed down by the rain," he says.
Celestino Recatalá, President of Asoproa, says: "We all have relatives in other towns, or farms that we want to visit to find out if they have been affected. We are going through a period of intense worry, but we need to remain aware of the fact that our safety is what matters most. It's an indescribable situation; a storm of an intensity that we had never seen before."