Climate, decision-making and urbanization blamed for Spain tragedy

Climate change, local communication and urban development are the main causes for so many deaths and the huge devastation from the deadliest flash floods in Spain's modern history.

This is the view of a UK climate scientist, talking to CGTN, as Spain mounts its biggest peacetime disaster recovery operation. At least 211 people have died with dozens still unaccounted for, four days after torrential rains swept the eastern region of Valencia. 

Jeff Da Costa, Climate Scientist at Reading University, said: "There's no denying climate change. We're living in a climate change era. We've been living in it for a while now, and the predictions and forecasts were true. 

"So events like this are becoming more severe and more intense and more frequent. But I would argue that the focus at the moment should be on what went wrong."

On Saturday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the government was sending 5,000 more army troops to help with the searches and clean-up, in addition to 2,500 soldiers already deployed.

As Spain grapples with the fallout of the disaster, questions have been asked over why it took until after 8pm for the civil protection service to issue an alert urging residents not to leave home in the Valencia region.

Da Costa highlighted that the Spanish metrological agency had issued warnings days before that "severe weather phenomenon was about to happen."

"Communication was done by the government agency, but they do not have the capacity or the authority to order evacuations or to order people to stay at home, to close schools, close roads," Da Costa added.

"Things like that fall into the responsibility of local decision makers and civil protection. So it's worth mentioning that although many, many things went wrong and there has been this amount of casualties, the forecast was actually reliable.

"These events have been recurring regularly but in different kinds of severity and not on this scale. It's important not to mix climate change and climate variability. 

"The scale and magnitude is different. There were bad floods in this area around 30 and 50 years ago. It's not the same as it is today. If you look at an area where previously there were just fields and farmers, the impact would have been less than the impact today in the urbanized area."