2 days ago
ROLAND WHITE reviews Why Cities Flood: Spain's Deadly Disaster - 'Astonishing footage of Spain's killer flood was an hour of non-stop drama'
One of the reasons that television is not an entirely reliable guide to world affairs is that it can't resist a dramatic picture.
The news is very good at fires and rocket attacks and waves lashing the coastline in high winds, but less confident about issues that involve dull people in suits sitting around a table.
Why Cities Flood: Spain 's Deadly Disaster was pretty much an hour's worth of non-stop drama as it recalled flash floods which overwhelmed parts of southern Spain in October last year, killing more than 230 people.
There were people dangling from balconies over raging waters as neighbours frantically tried to pull them to safety.
One street scene had so many cars piled up on top of each other that it looked more like a scrapyard.
A lot of the drama came from mobile phone footage. As a motorist tried to escape from an underground car park, he filmed the water rising rapidly up his door and noted (in Spanish), with admirable understatement: 'This is getting tricky.'
Tricky? He was lucky to escape with his life. In another basement car park, seven people died.
British visitor Karen-Marie Loftus and her husband were on a motorway near Valencia when they were caught in the storm. 'I had never seen rain quite like it,' she said.
Just five minutes after the storm began, water started seeping into the car. Then the engine cut out. By now, the water was so high that they couldn't open the doors.
They managed to escape through a window, and a Moroccan lorry driver let them into his cab and carried them to safety.
Four hours later, they received a mobile phone alert, letting them know heavy rain was on the way.
Those alerts weren't the only way that the people of the region felt let down by government. As one flood victim complained: 'The army, police, civil guard — they were nowhere to be seen.'
It was a civilian army of neighbours — arriving in their thousands with mops and buckets and spades — who began the clear-up work.
When King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the area, they were pelted with mud.
In between the astonishing footage, Why Cities Flood wasn't short on analysis. The mobile phone alerts were late, it appears, because sensors were giving misleading data.
And U.S. severe storms expert Jonathan Gourley explained how difficult it was to predict intense rainfall.
Is it going to be a catastrophic event, or just a normal thunderstorm?
Global warming got a brief mention, but the biggest danger seems to be our bizarre appetite for building on flood plains.
Why Cities Flood should be required viewing for any councillor who is about to grant planning permission for a housing estate.
