After the hottest summer for fifty years, Torrevieja is experiencing the wettest September for over 100 years.

Monday’s heavy rains should not have caught the emergency services unprepared but many of the town’s roads around Carrefour shopping centre, downtown and in Playa los Locos sported over half a meter of fast flowing water, which didn’t seem to have anywhere to go!

Car after car stalled in the high waters as electrics became wet, caused many times because trucks and vans, with a higher road clearance, created waves that flowed unabated into the engine departments of oncoming vehicles. Having personally given about a dozen fireman’s lifts to stranded ladies and children outside of Ardy’s, I can attest that there was no sign of any emergency services, fire trucks nor Proteccion Civil on site for the three hours that I was ‘stranded’ in the vicinity awaiting the ‘river’ levels to drop.

We all know that Torrevieja has high kerbs to allow heavy water to flow down to the sea and thus, in this part of town it certainly could not be classed as an emergency, more of an inconvenience. What was lacking, due to the absence of local patrols, was the erecting of barriers to stop traffic trying to pass in these conditions. The same situation occurs every time when there is a heavy rainfall so authorities cannot say they were unaware of a possible situation. When barriers eventually arrived (at only one end of the street but not the three access roads leading onto it!) these quickly started to flow away; due to the speed of the water!

This week’s rain caused more inconvenience than disaster. Other parts of the Valencian Community were very badly hit with thousands of euros of damage caused to property, roads, bridges and cars. Hopefully this will act as a wake-up call for the Emergency Services to be on their guard for the next time such weather is predicted, should such weather conditions be expected.