At least 95 people dead in Spain’s worst floods in three decades

At least 95 people have died in eastern, central and southern Spain after torrential rains triggered the country’s deadliest floods in three decades, unleashing torrents of muddy water that surged through cities, towns and villages, trapping people in their homes, bringing down trees, and cutting off roads and railway lines.

As the search for dozens of missing people continued, motorists were urged to stay off the roads and away from swollen rivers amid warnings that the severe weather was not over and that the number of deaths could still rise.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Valencian government’s emergency coordination centre said the latest number of known deaths in the region was 92, while the central government delegation in the neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha region reported two deaths, including that of an 88-year-old woman in the city of Cuenca. Another death was reported in Andalucía’s Málaga province.

The Valencian authorities urged people to keep clear of flooded or cut-off roads, saying the emergency services needed access and that more flood water could accumulate. More than 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units were deployed to the devastated areas. The central government also sent nine forensic experts to Valencia to help with the task of identifying bodies.

Images on Spanish TV showed turbulent, muddy water coursing through the town of Letur in the eastern province of Albacete on Tuesday, dragging cars through its streets.

“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told the national broadcaster RTVE. He said several people were missing in his town. “We were trapped like rats. Cars and rubbish containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 metres [10ft],” he said.

One elderly couple were rescued from the upper storey of their house by a military unit using a bulldozer, with three soldiers accompanying them in the huge shovel.

Television reports ran videos from members of the public showing waters flooding into the ground floors of flats, streams overflowing their banks and at least one bridge giving way.

A high-speed train with nearly 300 people onboard derailed near Málaga, although rail authorities said no one was hurt. The high-speed rail service between Valencia city and Madrid was interrupted, as were several commuter lines.

Tuesday’s floods were Spain’s worst since 1996, when 87 people died after torrential rain hit a campsite in the Pyrenees mountains. Europe’s most recent catastrophic floods came in July 2021, killing 243 people in Germany, Belgium, Romania, Italy and Austria.

Collisions between planes and birds follow seasonal patterns and overlap with breeding and migration – new research

Bird strikes with aircraft pose a serious threat to human safety. The problem dates back to the early days of aviation, with the first death of a pilot recorded in 1912 when an aircraft crashed into the sea after striking a gull.

Since then, 795 lives have been lost to collisions between aircraft and birds, not to mention the countless bird fatalities.

As aircraft get faster, quieter, larger and more numerous, the risk of serious accidents increases accordingly. Every year, the aviation industry incurs damages worth billions of dollars.

To mitigate this problem, airports around the world implement wildlife hazard management, including dispersing flocks away from the runway, tracking local bird movements and managing potential food sources such as landfills and farms near the aerodrome.

In our recent study, we zoomed out from the local airport and examined seasonal and hemispheric trends in bird strikes.

We found they peak in late summer and autumn in both hemispheres, but the annual distribution differs between the northern and southern hemispheres. Seasonal trends in bird strikes were seemingly influenced by avian breeding and migration patterns.