After the floods in Spain Special ship to track down cars swept into the sea

A special ship is to search the seabed off Valencia for vehicles that may have been swept away by the water. A diving robot is to provide important clues.

A Spanish research vessel is to support the search for missing persons from last week's storms. The 24 crew members of the "Ramón Margalef" were relieved of their usual duties and prepared on Friday to use sensors and a diving robot to map an area of 36 square kilometers off the coast. The aim is to identify vehicles that have been swept into the Mediterranean by the water.

The authorities are hoping to find more fatalities in this way. Officially, almost 100 people have been declared missing, but the authorities have admitted that in addition to the more than 200 deaths confirmed so far, it is likely that even more people have fallen victim to the storms. Many cars became death traps when the tsunami-like floods hit on October 29.

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Pablo Carrera, estimated that his team would provide useful information to the police and emergency services within ten days. Without a map, it would be virtually impossible for the police to carry out a systematic recovery operation to reach the vehicles on the seabed, he said. "It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack," Carrera explained.

The ship is supporting the salvage operation by police and soldiers. They have extended their search for bodies and missing persons beyond the devastated villages and streets. The emergency services are poking around in the mud with sticks, while sniffer dogs are supposed to find dead bodies in canals and fields. The beaches along the coast are also being searched. The ship was expected in the waters off Valencia on Saturday.

The "Ramón Margalef" will first search a section off the Albufera wetlands, where some of the water from the villages and the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia flowed into the sea. A radio station reported on Friday that the body of a missing woman from the town of Pedralba had been found on the beach, around an hour's drive from the coast.

Impact of climate change

Spain is used to autumn storms and occasionally severe flooding. The drought that has plagued the country over the past two years and the record-breaking hot temperatures have exacerbated the recent flooding, according to scientists. The Spanish weather authority announced that more than 30 liters of rain had fallen in one hour in the city of Turis in Valencia - a Spanish record.

"We have never experienced an autumn storm of this intensity," said Carrera. "We can't stop climate change, so we have to prepare for its effects."

dpa