The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that the government will send 5,000 more military personnel to the flood-affected area, with 4,000 of them arriving today, as well as the same number of Civil Guard and police officers, the Spanish news agency EFE reported, quoted by bTA.
He announced this at a press conference after a meeting of the crisis committee to deal with the consequences of the disaster.
„This is the largest operation of the armed forces in Spain in peacetime,”, Sanchez also said. “The government will mobilize all necessary resources while they are needed,”, he added.
Furthermore, at the ministerial council meeting next Tuesday, the government will approve the declaration of a civil protection emergency in the worst-hit areas. These will be the regions of Valencia, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia, Catalonia and Aragon.
The process of searching for and identifying the bodies of the dead continues, and many people are still missing, notes EFE.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlasca Gómez said regarding the number of victims that “it is reasonable to believe that we will have more deaths” and added that the data of 1,900 people who are still missing should be taken into account.
Meanwhile, volunteers flocked to the city's Center of Arts and Sciences in Valencia for the first coordinated cleanup organized by regional authorities, Reuters notes. The object has been turned into the nerve center of the operation.
A mass spontaneous arrival of volunteers yesterday complicated the access of professional rescuers to some areas, prompting the authorities to develop a plan on how and where to deploy the volunteers.
The tragedy in Spain is the worst flood-related disaster in Europe since 1967, when at least 500 people died in Portugal, according to Reuters.