EXCLUSIVE by Jon Clarke in Ronda
A HIGH-LEVEL meeting is taking place in Ronda to decide how to tackle the current emergency in inland Andalucia, where 11,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.
It comes as a century-old dam came just inches from its capacity with authorities fearing it could collapse.
The 36 cubic hectometre reservoir in Montejaque, near Ronda – equivalent to 14,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools – is almost completely full of water.
As the Olive Press reported over the weekend, 200 people have already been evacuated from the village of Benaojan Estación below it in fears it could burst.
Sources told the Olive Press this morning it was just a ‘quarter of a metre from the top’.
“They are worried about the dam, really worried. Whether it can hold or not,” said the Ronda police source.
“It’s now at a quarter of a meter from the top – it looks like it’s soon going to come over,” he added.
“There is also the question about the 2,000 evacuated from Grazalema and the bedrock of nearby Benaojan collapsing,” he added.
“The dam has never gotten that high and given its 100 years old everyone is very worried about it.”
He added: “The question is, is there a way to let the water out safely before it breaks. It’s a nerve-wracking day here.”
The Olive Press was able to get unprecedented access to the disaster meeting, being attended by specialists from around Spain.
The nerve-center was full at 1.00pm with mayors from four nearby towns, as well as geologists, architects and meteorologists.
The mayor of Ronda, Mari Paz Fernandez declined to comment as she entered.
A source from GREA, the emergency centre coordinating the response, said there are ‘real fears’ the dam might not hold.
The Olive Press overheard her talking outside the court, looking very concerned. She said they were waiting for the ‘key politicians’ before making any decisions.
As we went to press it appeared a decision had been made to leave the dam to overflow ‘if it does’ and hope for the best.
But given the so-called ‘earthquakes’ caused by the amount of water dropped on Grazalema it looked likely that residents won’t be permitted to return to the town yet.
A final decision will be made this afternoon.
Meanwhile, Benaojan Town Hall issued a fresh appeal for calm, insisting the situation remains ‘controlled and monitored 24 hours a day’ by the Guardia Civil.
In a message directed at displaced residents, officials sent their ‘affection and encouragement’, promising that ‘soon we will be together again’, while urging locals to ignore ‘false information’ circulating on WhatsApp.
The dam, built in 1924 by Swiss engineers, is 83.75m high, has stood as a spectacular engineering failure hidden in the mountains above Ronda for over a century.
To the locals, it was the ‘Ghost Dam’; a concrete folly that could never hold water. But this weekend, the ghost has woken up.
As Storm Leonardo battered the province, something unprecedented happened – the vast subterranean cave systems that have drained this reservoir for so many years finally filled up.
Saturated to the limit, the mountain stopped absorbing the water, and the dam began to fill.
With the water lapping at its spillways for the first time in history, the pressure on the limestone gorge is immense.
The terrifying ‘tremors’ reported by residents in the valley below are the sounds of a geological system pushed to breaking point, forcing the evacuation of 200 souls from the Estacion de Benaojan.
British residents have described to the Olive Press the moment they were forced to flee their homes after hearing ‘weird, deep booming noises’ coming from the mountains above them.
The panic began in the early hours of Friday morning when the ground itself seemed to groan under the pressure of the water.
“It’s so strange, we heard these weird deep, booming noises in the middle of the night,” said British resident Paul Rolfe.
“And then the next morning we found water seeping out of various holes in the wall.”
The disturbing sounds are believed to be the Bramido – a roar caused by air and water being violently forced through the underground cave system that sits beneath the overflowing Montejaque Dam.
Rolfe described a desperate battle to save his home as the water levels rose, comparing the scene to the nearby town of Grazalema, where fears are growing that the sodden earth could cause the town to ‘literally slip away’.
“It has been absolutely crazy,” he told this newspaper. “Benaojan received over 300mm of rain in one day this week – that is more than Almeria receives in an entire year.”
“We spent hours bringing everything upstairs to the first floor to stop it getting wet. We initially tried to keep mopping the water out of the ground floor, but in the end we gave up because water kept appearing in more and more holes.”
In a dramatic move to save the property, a neighbour eventually had to take a sledgehammer to the front of the house.
“Finally a neighbour came and smashed a hole in our front step so all the water could simply drain out,” Rolfe added.
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