DOZENS of pigeons have been slaughtered by a severe storm that battered the Catalan province of Tarragona with giant hail and hurricane-force winds.
The violent tempest unleashed egg-sized hail stones of more than 5cm in diameter and brought destructive gusts reaching 117kph on Monday.
Residents took to social media to document the devastation, with one local describing the barrage of ice as causing a ‘genuine massacre’ of the city’s pigeon population.
Three people were rushed to hospital by the SEM medical emergency service after sustaining injuries during the chaos, though none are in a serious condition.
The 112 emergency line received 769 calls as the skies opened, generating more than 500 official incident reports across the province.
Tarragona city itself bore the brunt of the destruction with 400 emergency calls, while the nearby coastal resorts of Cambrils, Salou and Vila-seca were also heavily impacted.
The Servei Meteorologic de Catalunya (SMC), the regional weather agency, recorded a staggering 77.3mm of rain in Tarragona city over just three hours.
Almost half of that deluge — 34mm — crashed down in a torrential 30-minute window.
Inland at Vinyols i els Arcs, a small municipality near Cambrils, the rainfall reached an even higher 88.6mm.
The Bombers, Catalunya’s firefighting service, scrambled to deal with flooded ground floors, collapsed roofs and toppled trees across the Mediterranean coast.
One car became completely submerged up to its roof under a flooded access bridge in El Serrallo, Tarragona’s historic maritime and fishing district.
Falling trees crushed several parked vehicles along the seafront promenade, while falling branches also damaged a bungalow and a motorhome at a local campsite.
The torrential downpours triggered widespread travel chaos, completely cutting off the A-7 motorway in Vila-seca and forcing the closure of a southbound lane on the AP-7 highway.
Train passengers also faced severe delays, with trains on the Rodalies commuter network forced to operate on a single track between Tarragona and Torredembarra into Tuesday morning.
Hundreds of residents in the Baro de les IV Torres neighbourhood of Tarragona remained without electricity on Tuesday as utility crews battled to restore downed power lines.
Regional authorities are maintaining the INUNCAT flood alert plan on standby, warning residents of the Baix Camp area to stay clear of rivers and streams due to the risk of sudden flash floods.
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