What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain

MADRID (AP) — In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands saw livelihoods shattered.

Three days later, authorities have recovered 205 bodies — 202 of them in the eastern Valencia region, two in Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia. They continued to search for an unknown number of missing people on Friday.

With warnings of more rain on the way, people were cleaning up the thick layers of mud that covered houses, streets and highways full of debris, all while facing power and water cuts and shortages of some basic goods. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed into piles or crashed into buildings, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo riverbed, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives, with many coming home from work on Tuesday evening.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads, railways and entered houses and businesses in villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents tried to take refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”

When the authorities sent the alert to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the phenomenon and asked them to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or garages, which became death traps.

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.

And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.

The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, ground zero of the tragedy, claim that Tuesday’s floods were three times as bad as those of 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths and were the worst in the history of the tourist eastern region. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the city was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982, with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later, which broke rainfall records.

This week's flash floods are also Spain's deadliest natural tragedy in living memory, surpassing the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people in August 1996.

The management of this crisis, classified as level two on a scale of three by the Valencian government, is in the hands of the regional authorities, who can ask the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

At the request of Valencia’s president, Carlos Mazón, of the conservative Popular Party, the central government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has deployed more 500 soldiers, that joined 1,200 from the Military Emergency Unit, the army’s first intervention force for natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

On Saturday, 500 more will join the effort to rescue victims, clear debris and provide water and food.

On the ground there are also almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes- who have carried out 4,500 rescues during the floods - and 1,800 national police officers.

When many of those affected said they felt abandoned by the authorities, a wave of volunteers took the streets to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic foods, hundreds of people have walked several kilometers each day to deliver supplies and help clean up the worst-affected areas.

Sánchez’s government is expected to approve a disaster declaration on Tuesday that will allow quick access to financial aid. Mazón has announced additional economic assistance.

The Valencia regional government had been criticized for not sending out flood warnings to mobile phones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some places and well after the national weather agency issued a red alert indicating heavy rains.

Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

A woman rests as residents and volunteers clean up an area affected by floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Firefighters walk as people try to clear up the damage after floods in Massanassa, just outside of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Residents carry their belongings as they leave their houses affected by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Residents clean their house affected by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Vehicles are seen piled up after being swept away by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Flooded cars piled up are pictured in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Residents from the Valencia area walk carrying cleaning instruments to help in the flooded areas in the La Torre neighbourhood of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A woman rests as residents and volunteers clean up an area affected by floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

People clean mud from a shop affected by floods in Chiva, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state’s tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.

Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation’s attention in the days before World War II and the boy’s grit earned an award from the president.

For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.

“I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes,” said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.

Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).

The boy’s peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.

The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times, director Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger said.

“Times are dark in the country in a weird way. You know, there are political divisions, society is a little on edge, and everything. And I thought, here’s a movie that reminds people about just the power of community, the power of caring about your neighbors. And the themes were so basic and simple. And for some reason, we just sometimes seem to be reminded of those things,” he said.

The movie brings a vintage vibe to the big screen.

Filming took place in the woods of upstate New York, with the crew battling insects and wading through shoulder-height water for scenes in a canoe. Other scenes were filmed on Mount Katahdin and a replica mountaintop built in a soundstage, complete with lichen-covered granite stones, blowing wind and rain and lightning.

The movie gives the perspective of the distraught family as well as the terrified boy, played by Luke David Blumm. His father is played by Paul Sparks (“House of Cards,” “Boardwalk Empire”). Maine native Caitlin FitzGerald (“Masters of Sex,” “Succession”), who read the book and met Fendler as a girl, takes on the role of Donn's mom.

FitzGerald isn’t the only Mainer involved in the film. A producer Ryan Cook, who also grew up in Maine, partnered with another Mainer, Dick Boyce. Both were familiar with the book and Cook became close to Fendler and previously produced a documentary about him.

Fendler was generous with his time and often told his story at school assemblies. “I tell every one of them they have something inside them they don’t know they have,” he told The Associated Press in 2011, five years before his death at age 90. “When it comes up to a bad situation, they’re going to find out how tough a person they are in the heart and the mind — it’s called the will to live.”

Sylvester Stallone's Balboa Productions took on the project because he liked the story of the plucky underdog.

Kightlinger, who hiked Katahdin to audition for the job of directing the movie, said adventure stories are a dime a dozen. This one, he feels, was made stronger by the backstory of the difficulties Donn and his father had connecting.

“It’s ultimately about a kid who just wants a hug from his dad,” Kightlinger said. “That’s such a pure, simple message, and I think more movies should aspire to just do that and remind people of the simple things, because there’s a lot of noise in our world now, and the simple things sometimes get lost.”

Nielsen said the story is both riveting and practical. In her classroom, the book inspires discussions about geography, plants and wildlife; preparation and survival skills; and resilience in the face of adversity.

Her teenage son learned a valuable lesson from the book: Stay together in the wilderness.

The 16-year-old was hiking Mount Katahdin with friends a few weeks ago. After hiking above the trees, they were traversing rocks when a storm came in. The three made the difficult decision as a group to turn back.

“My son wanted to keep going, but he knew that they had to stay together. He learned that lesson from the book. I’m 100% certain,” she said.

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 1940 file photo, Boy Scout Donn Fendler, of Rye, N.Y., is honored by President Franklin Roosevelt with a gold medal for valor at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Donn Fendler chats with a young reader at a book signing in Bangor, Maine, Nov. 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Michael C. York, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2017, file photo, the first rays of sunlight color the clouds over Mount Katahdin in this view from Patten, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)