WHAT WENT WRONG IN SPAIN?
We won’t know exactly what went wrong in Spain unless there’s an inquest, but this isn’t the first time that flood warnings and responses have been found lacking in Europe.
In July 2021, flash floods in Germany killed 189 people. An analysis of the flood alert system found it to have serious weaknesses, with survey data indicating that many residents didn’t receive a warning, or underestimated the magnitude of the deluge, while up to 50 per cent of those that were warned didn’t know what steps to take to protect themselves and their property.
As the report says, warnings are only helpful if the people in flood-prone areas and civil protection agencies “receive and notice the warning in time, trust the warning, understand its content, and know how to respond and behave adequately”. That wasn’t the case in Germany; the shortcomings were clearly repeated in Spain.
Providing effective forecasts and warnings can be challenging. While weather models these days are fairly accurate, it remains extremely difficult to predict precisely where thunderstorms will strike and whether the rain will translate into flash floods, as it depends on many local variables such as topography, infrastructure and surfaces.
It’s made more difficult by the fact that we’re seeing rare events more often because of climate change. It’s hard to predict what the impact of a year’s worth of rainfall in just eight hours are when it’s never been observed before. That’s true for both forecasters and the public.
