Hver uke bringer nye oversvømmelseskatastrofer - bare i Europa. De nevnes
omtrent ikke i norske medier. Er det sant at "klimaforandringene skaper
GLEDE!!" slik det ble proklamert av NRK-dagsrevyen i en jubelmelding torsdag
i forrige uke?
Karsten Johansen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_988000/988615.stm
Tuesday, 24 October, 2000, 15:21 GMT 16:21 UK
Floods kill five in Spain
Most of the dead perished after their cars were swept away. At least five
people have been killed and three are missing in floods that have been
sweeping through eastern Spain since the weekend.
Rescuers have been using helicopters and mechanical diggers to reach people
trapped near the River Ebro in Catalonia, one of the regions worst affected
by storms and torrential rain.
Water levels in the Ebro are still rising dramatically and hundreds of
people living in the surrounding delta region have been evacuated.
Rescue workers are continuing their search for the three people still
missing - a young woman and two children, all from separate families.
Towns and villages along Spain's Mediterranean seaboard have been inundated.
Further down the coast, in Valencia and Murcia, dozens of roads and railway
lines have been cut.
Swept away
In all, states of emergency have been declared in 11 provinces, with
Zaragoza, Teruel and Albacete also badly hit.
Three people were killed and one - a four-year-old boy - went missing when
their vehicle was swept away by flood waters on Sunday, just south of
Tarragona, near the town of Cambrils.
At Ramonete, near Murcia in the south-east, a woman died in a similar
incident. Her two-year-old child is amongst those missing.
And just south of Amposta, a 90-year-old woman was found drowned in her
basement on Monday.
A 37-year-old woman went missing in Cartagena, after she called her husband
on a mobile phone to say her car was being carried away by rising waters in
a nearby river, which had burst its banks.
More to come
Between Tarragona and Castellon, the Ebro has risen by 2.5 metres (eight
feet) since the storms began.
About 1,000 homes in the region are without electricity.
"The Ebro is just a few centimetres away from flooding," a spokesman for the
Catalan regional Government said.
But local emergency services expect the rains to ease as the storm moves
south.
"As long as the river doesn't rise to seven metres, we should be okay," a
spokeswoman said.
Weather forecasters do not expect the storms to abate until Thursday at the
earliest.
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