Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Spanish blizzard kills 4 people, traps travelers
MADRID — A blizzard blanketed large parts of Spain with an unusual amount of snow Saturday, killing at least four people and leaving thousands trapped in cars or at train stations and airports that suspended service.
The national weather agency reported that as of 7 a.m., the snowfall in Madrid reached a level unseen in half a century. More than 20 inches of snow fell in the Spanish capital, according to the weather agency AEMET.
The bodies of a man and woman were recovered by the Andalucia region emergency service after their car was washed away by a flooded river near the town of Fuengirola. The Interior Ministry said a 54-year-old man was also found dead in Madrid under a big pile of snow. A homeless man died of hypothermia in the northern city of Zaragoza, the local police department reported.
More than half of Spain’s provinces remained under severe weather alerts for Storm Filomena on Saturday evening, seven of them at the highest level of warning. In Madrid, authorities activated a red alert for the first time since the system was adopted four decades ago and called in the military to rescue people from vehicles trapped on everything from small roads to the city’s major thoroughfares.
Sandra Morena, who became trapped late Friday as she commuted to her night shift as a security guard in a shopping center, arrived home on foot after an army emergency unit helped her out Saturday morning.
“It usually takes me 15 minutes, but this time it has been 12 hours freezing, without food or water, crying with other people because we didn’t know how we were going to get out of there,” said Morena, 22.
“Snow can be very beautiful, but spending the night trapped in a car because of it is no fun,” she said.
As of Saturday evening, Spanish security services had rescued all the people who were trapped in vehicles — more than 1,500, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
AEMET had warned that some regions would be receiving more than 24 hours of continuous snowfall because of an odd combination of a cold air mass stagnant over the Iberian Peninsula and the arrival of the warmer Storm Filomena from the south.
Transport Minster Jose Luis Abalos warned that “snow is going to turn into ice and we will enter a situation perhaps more dangerous than what we have at the moment.”
He added that the priority was to assist those in need but also to ensure the supply chain for food and other basic goods.
Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas International Airport, the main gateway in and out of Spain, will remain closed at least until today, Abalos said, after the blizzard bested machines and workers trying to keep the runways clear of snow.
All trains into and out of Madrid, both commuter routes and long-distance passenger trains, as well as railway lines between the south and the northeast of the country, were suspended, railway operator Renfe said.
The Spanish government plans to take extra steps to ensure that the country’s weekly shipment of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine on Monday can be distributed to regional health authorities, the interior minister said.