ALMOST 11,000 residents were evacuated from their homes across Andalucia over the weekend as Storm Marta’s ‘atmospheric river’ made landfall.
The region has been left reeling after one of the wettest winters in years with a succession of Atlantic fronts and named storms bringing torrential rainfall and high winds.
According to Aemet, the state weather agency, the volume of rainfall accumulated since the turn of the year currently exceeds triple the normal value for much of Spain, including Madrid, Andalucia and Catalunya.
The rain is forecast to continue to fall this week, although the spell of poor weather is expected to finally relent over the weekend with a return to clear skies and warmer conditions across southern Spain.
The rain-soaked town of Grazalema in Cadiz, where over 500mm fell in just 24 hours last week in one of the wettest days on record, remains under an orange alert with an extra 150mm expected to hit on Monday.
A yellow alert is also in place for Ronda where fears are growing over the stability of the 93-metre-tall Los Caballeros dam in Montejaque.
Residents in neighbouring villages in the Serrania de Ronda mountains have reported feeling the ground ‘tremble’ and hearing unsettling ‘roaring’ noises from down below, which the Andalucian government have explained away as ‘normal hydrogeological phenomena in episodes of prolonged and intense rainfall’.
Over 200 people have been evacuated from the nearby village of Estacion de Benaojan, including dozens of British expats, amid fears the dam could burst its banks.
Built in the 1920s on porous rock, the dam was deemed a massive engineering failure because it could never hold water, which always leaked away through the massive Hundidero-Gato cave system
However, the torrential rains from over four weeks of storms have completely saturated the caves, causing the ‘ghost dam’ to fill to its limit for the first time in history.
Engineers warn that the water is now lapping at the spillways and the pressure on the mountain itself is critical.
Technicians from Endesa plus officials from the environmental ministry, the Military Emergency Unit (UME) and Guardia Civil have been spotted near the site.
A representative for the Junta stressed that ‘the only possibility foreseen is an eventual controlled overflow, a scenario contemplated within the normal operation of this type of infrastructure’.
Juanma Moreno, the president of Andalucia, said: “It is raining on saturated land. The ground is unable to drain and the reservoirs are full. Therefore, we ask for great caution.
“It is not over yet. We still have some rain until Wednesday at least all over Andalucia. Let’s be extremely cautious and not give in to the feeling that this is over, because there may be more dangerous situations and circumstances.”
According to Moreno, the storms have caused over €500 million of damage to the region’s roads, prompting the president to request extra funds from the European Union.
The prime minister Pedro Sanchez is set to visit Granada and Jaen today to see two areas impacted by the spell of poor weather.
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