Victim’s body found 1 year after being swept away by floods that killed over 230 people in Spain
Spanish authorities on Thursday said they found the body of a 56-year-old man who died after being swept away in floods in the eastern Valencia region last year, the country’s deadliest such disaster in decades.
DNA analysis confirmed that a corpse found on Tuesday in the Turia river belonged to one of three people reported missing since the tragedy on Oct. 29 last year that killed more than 230 people, a Valencia court said in a statement.
The victim, like the two other missing people, “had already been declared legally dead” and so the death toll did not increase, the court added.
The water had dragged the body some 19 miles from the town of Pedralba to the municipality of Manises outside the regional capital Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city.
Bernat Armangue/AP 
A state funeral will take place in the city next week, on Oct. 29, to mark once year since the disaster, which raised serious questions about the adequacy of alert systems and the emergency response.
Campaigners have taken to the streets every month, demanding the resignation of the head of the regional government Carlos Mazon over his handling of the floods, with the next demonstration scheduled for Saturday.
Regional authorities insist they did not have the information needed to warn people sooner.
Before-and-after satellite images of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the catastrophe, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape inundated with muddy waters.
Maxar Technologies via REUTERS 
Zoe Wilkes, a British woman who lives in Valencia, launched a group of volunteers to help rebuild the area, BBC News reported.
“It was just shocking,” Wilkes told BBC News. “You couldn’t comprehend how strong the water must have been to have thrown cars around like toys.”
Late last month, the area was struck by more bad weather as Storm Gabrielle inundated the region, BBC News reported. Footage showed floodwater in parts of Valencia and Zaragoza, and the local meteorological agency said more than 7 inches of rain had fallen in six to eight hours around the Ebro delta. No injuries were reported, but schools, libraries and parks were closed.
