EU help sought over flood damage – over 4,000 homes seriously damaged

Madrid has announced that it has declared the area to be a victim of a natural disaster and will seek EU financial help to rebuild and repair the damage caused by flooding over the weekend in Malaga, Almeria and Murcia.

Over 4,000 homes in the Levante have been “seriously damaged” according to the Minister of Development who toured the area last night, and local townhalls are setting up emergency offices for homeowners to declare their losses and request emergency aid.

70 soldiers from the UME continue to work in Puerto Laguna on cleanup duties. 20 of them are engineers who are inspecting the homes in the areas to see if any of them are at risk of collapse (some are).

Additional police units are also in the area after initial reports of looting – it seems that the supermarket on the main Bouganvillas roundabout was looted that night, as were quite a few homes.

There will be one centralised help effort, said Bañéz, the Minister of Development, which will include all administrations from the townhalls all the way to the EU, in order to channel help to those who need it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Sadly, Spain has forced to become quite efficient at this sort of thing, after the many forest fires that have destroyed villages over the last few years show.

As a side note, emergency services have been as efficient and as quick as in the Bédar fires, and in general I think we have to salute the rapid response teams who worked throughout the afternoon and night in very difficult conditions to rescue trapped people. It is thanks to the military, police and fire brigades that the death toll was not much, much higher.