Spanish navy diver Alvaro Carrillo donned his wetsuit and prepared a speedboat to scour a normally picturesque lagoon made murky by a sea of debris — and potentially bodies.
As rescuers painstakingly seek victims of Spain’s deadliest floods in decades in inland towns and fields, Carrillo’s team is shifting the hunt for the dozens of missing to the coast.
The torrential downpours on October 29 — which in some places dumped a year’s worth of rain in hours — have swept detritus towards estuaries and beaches.
Three bodies have been found on the usually idyllic beaches facing the Mediterranean Sea, according to Spanish media.
The authorities — heavily criticised for their handling of the catastrophe and confusing information on the number of dead and missing — have neither confirmed nor denied the reports.
But an emergency unit involved in the rescue told AFP on condition of anonymity that at least one body has been discovered in the sea.
Carrillo and his 20-strong team set out at the crack of dawn on the Albufera lagoon in the eastern Valencia region that has suffered almost all the devastation and 219 deaths.
The lagoon lies at the heart of a natural park where thousands of migratory birds shelter in the winter and restaurants serve paella to nature lovers who can explore its pristine waters by boat.
But its 2,700 hectares (6,670 acres) of shallow fresh water were almost opaque when AFP visited after the floods dragged in cars, furniture and mounds of reeds.
The poor visibility is the “trickiest” part of the team’s work, but they would keep going “as long as the daylight allows”, sub-lieutenant Carrillo, 26, told AFP.
– Sea of reeds –
Spain has dispatched more boats to the coast and increased its diving teams sixfold, Javier Marcos, head of the army’s emergencies unit, told reporters on Friday.
Divers from the regional fire service and the Civil Guard were also taking part in the disaster zone, AFP journalists saw.
Firefighters struggled to remove reeds that had jammed open a lock, allowing the lagoon’s contents to drift into the Mediterranean.
“It’s sad, but it makes complete sense that they’re looking here,” said Jose Torrent, a pensioner from Valencia who often strolls around the lagoon.
The regional emergency committee overseeing the rescue said on Thursday that radars and special equipment were being used to chart the waters.
To the east of Albufera lies the isolated El Saler beach, another popular beauty spot now buried under piles of reeds scattered by the raging tides.
Local council workers hoisted a red flag to dissuade potential bathers from the beach, which like others in the region has been sealed off.
But the lagoon often swells to match the rising water levels during storms and bears few physical scars compared with the scenes of desolation surrounding it.
“The only visible damage is in the fishermen’s nets,” said Gregorio Ortega, 66, pointing towards some stakes to which clung nets used to capture eels.
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