Flood disaster in Spain: 5,000 more soldiers drafted in to deal with the consequences | Spain

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has ordered the country's largest peacetime military deployment and announced that an additional 5,000 troops will be drafted to deal with the fallout from this week's devastating floods that killed at least 211 people in the east, south and center Regions.

After chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilizing all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy” that was worst in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the aid was still not arriving and called for unity and an end to political bickering and finger-pointing.

“There are still dozens of people searching for their loved ones and hundreds of households mourning the loss of a relative, a friend or a neighbor,” he said in a televised address on Saturday morning. “I would like to express our deepest love to them and assure them that the government of Spain and of the entire State is at their side at all its different levels of administration.”

Describing the torrential rains and floods as “the worst natural disaster in our country's modern history” and the second-deadliest European floods of the century, the prime minister announced a huge increase in the number of army and police forces taking part in the relief effort.

In the first 48 hours of the crisis, he said, Spain experienced “the largest deployment of armed forces and police personnel that our country has ever seen in peacetime.” To date, 4,800 rescue operations have been carried out and more than 30,000 people have been helped in their homes, on the streets and in flooded industrial areas.”

But he said much of the aid was taking too long to reach blocked and flooded homes, garages and remote villages.

“That is why today the Spanish government is sending 4,000 additional military emergency unit personnel to the province of Valencia,” Sánchez said. “Another 1,000 military personnel will arrive tomorrow… I have also ordered the deployment of an amphibious naval boat with operating rooms, helicopters and a fleet of vehicles, which will arrive in the port of Valencia in the coming hours.”

The prime minister also said 5,000 more national police and civil guard officers would be deployed to the region, bringing the total number of police officers to 10,000.

“Our second priority is to identify and recover the bodies of the dead, and we must do this quickly but with all the dignity and guarantees that the victims and their families deserve,” he said. “In the last 48 hours, military and security personnel have inspected thousands of garages, riverbeds and streets and recovered the bodies of 211 fatalities.”

Specialized forensic personnel and mobile morgues are already in the disaster area, he added, and are “working day and night; Day and night as long as it takes to locate all the victims.”

Sanchez's speech came as thousands of volunteers arrived at the center of Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences, which has become the nerve center of the cleanup effort. On Friday, the spontaneous mass arrival of volunteers complicated access for rescue workers to some areas and prompted authorities to draw up a response plan.

The prime minister said power had been restored to 94% of affected homes while repairs to telephone lines were planned over the weekend.

Sánchez also acknowledged deep public anger over the handling of the emergency – many questioned why the Valencian government only sent out an emergency alert after 8pm on Tuesday – but called for unity.

“The situation we are experiencing is tragic and dramatic,” he said. “We are almost certainly talking about the worst flooding that our continent has experienced so far this century. I am aware that the response we are achieving is not enough. I know that. And I know that there are serious problems and shortages and that there are still destroyed services and cities buried in mud, with people desperately searching for their relatives, and people unable to get into their homes, and houses that were buried or destroyed by mud. I know we have to do better and give it our all.”

He said there would be time later to examine what went wrong and draw lessons “about the importance of our public services and how we strengthen them in the situations we live in as a result of climate change can… But now we need it to concentrate all our efforts on the colossal task we face, to forget our differences, put aside ideologies and disagreements and act together.”

This week's flash floods, caused by torrential rains that scientists have linked to the climate emergency, have inundated cities, towns and villages and swept away bridges, cars, trees and streetlights. The number of missing people remains unknown. Thousands more lack access to water or reliable food, while parts of the hardest-hit areas remain inaccessible. The piles of vehicles and debris have trapped some residents in their homes while others are without power or stable phone service.

An orange weather warning remained in effect on Saturday for Castellón, a province in Valencia, and for a stretch of coast in Tarragona, a province in Catalonia.