Apple donating to relief efforts following Spain's devastating floods
CEO Tim Cook says that Apple intends to donate to relief efforts in Valencia, Spain after the area experienced catastrophic flooding.
Tim Cook
Following heavy rainfall that struck Valencia, Spain, the region experienced what may be the deadliest flooding in modern Spanish history. More than a year's worth of rain fell in just eight hours, destroying bridges and buildings and resulting in at least 95 deaths in the area.
In response, Cook said the company would help fund relief efforts on the ground.
We're thinking of all those impacted by the devastating flash floods in the region of Valencia, Spain. Apple will be making a donation to help with relief efforts on the ground.
-- Tim Cook (@tim_cook)
Apple has pledged to fund several disaster-related efforts in recent history. In September, the company promised to donate to relief efforts associated with fallout from Hurricane Helene.
In October, Apple pledged to donate an undisclosed amount to relief efforts for those affected by Hurricane Milton.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Like with southern Appalachian region and Helene, where the prediction for rain amounts was pretty good 5 to 7 days before they came. It is surely true that weather models were saying this level of rain was coming to these Spanish areas at least 3 to 5 days before they came.
What's pretty common about these disasters is that there is a failure of imagination, from government leaders, weather shows (meteorologists), to the public receiving the news. Most people, a quarter of the people, hear the prediction and don't comprehend what 10 inches of rain over 24 hours mean, and are not reactive to doing something about it.
The government, businesses, should really give people a few days off ahead of time to prepare.
No current model could foresee the intensity of what hit the Valencia region. That is because the problem isn't what happened (that part was forecast) but the extreme intensity of what happened.
The nature of these depressions is that they form very quickly and can stay put over an area for prolonged periods of time.
The rising temperature of the Mediterranean Sea is supposedly the root cause of the problem. We expect torrential rain at this time of year. Short but torrential downpours. Flooding is normal.
I live three hours away from Valencia by car and have been receiving extreme weather warnings from government for three days now. My insurance company has also provided me with all the necessary hotlines and local contacts in readiness for what might come. Everything is on red alert but apart from a storm this morning, nothing has happened - yet.
I check the precipitation radar and I can see the areas around me that are getting rain but the problem is that a storm could simply appear 'out of thin air' with only hours of warning. Unlike a tropical storm, hurricane etc that can be tracked once formed.
Climate change has broken the normal patterns recently. To the point where we desperately need rain but haven't had it for the last four years.
I see animals coming down from the mountains in summer because there is just no water anywhere. That is not normal. My area is famous for wine, almonds and hazelnuts but farmers were told to let trees die last year as what water reserves there were, were for human consumption.
We've also been lucky that there haven't been any devastating wildfires on a wide scale either.
We have three pumps in our car park but when something like what hit in Valencia happens, all you can do is seal ground level doors and hope all the infrastructure that exists to stop trees and rocks from coming down with the torrents, does its job because we don't only deal with what falls directly on us, but all the accumulated rainfall streaming down from the mountains which typically hits the seafront and rebounds back.
Of course, those towns around Valencia also had to deal with the cars, street refuse containers and lots more crashing around them.
And then there are the situations that go overlooked. Most of the reservoirs around here were already mostly empty after a prolonged period of drought but here is a story about a dam that really drives home the magnitude of what happened the other night.
It is in Spanish so your browser will have to translate it but it's worth a read:
https://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2024/10/30/6722960a21efa01b778b459f.html
I'm troubled that your meteorology folks did not warn of the intensity of the rain coming. They know the basic atmospheric conditions that generate these torrential rains, and those conditions are a straight line (just physics) for determining the potential intensity of rains to come. I don't think it should have been much of a "surprise" from that point of view. It could be a surprise in the manner that people haven't seen rains like this before, but they should know of rain potentials and intensities many days before it occurs. The modeling is that good, and the risks should have been in the minds of the your meteorologists.
The rest is really communicating the potential of what the data is saying. If they know it is going to be bad, the proper response is to leave for a few days. For government folks, they really should know areas with history of flooding and tell those people to leave. It may turn out to be nothing, people will be angry if it was not much, but that's the better outcome. Leaving doesn't hurt any one. And if it is bad, it's better your stuff is destroyed than you.
Yes, global warming is changing hydrological cycles on a region by region basis. Run the models. Where the predictions are weak is there aren't many models to predict flooding potential, but they will come. The meteorologists should what more rain the experienced before means, too. This isn't a new normal. The GHG emissions that are warming the world haven't stopped increasing. Normal won't be back for at least 150 years, and that is assuming things go well. It's going to be multiple generations of people learning how to deal with global warming.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/satellite-images-spain-flooding
In the videos, some people have reached breaking point having to live through this kind of thing every couple of years and have decided to move elsewhere. There are heavily populated areas that will become uninhabitable due to the extreme weather.
Areas of land need to get an official status about how safe they are for the long-term so that large populations don't build up in them. It will devalue property but these events devalue it even more.
High profile donations help draw attention to the situation, Tim Cook's post had over 1m views.
Certainly if they paid billions in due taxes instead of millions in donations, governments might have the resources to build out infrastructure to help prevent so much damage and relocate people but these extreme climate events are catching everyone off-guard and are largely outside of everyone's control.
Unfortunately, there is a subtropical storm (Patty) headed to the Iberian peninsula now. It's 3 days out. There are models being run every few hours to forecast its ground track and its rainfall potential. It may end up on a more northerly track, it may dissipate to nothing, but it is being continuously tracked and modeled until it is gone.
That's just the 3 to 5 days that the US hurricane center publishes. The meteorologists have access to 14 day model runs. All these fronts, storm systems, etc, are modeled and there are potentials of what could happen. The models get good enough to publish 3, 5, 10 days out.
https://climatica.coop/aemet-meteorologos-avisaron-dana-semana-pasada/
"The state meteorological agency (AEMET) began reporting the arrival of a DANA on Wednesday 23 and issued up to three special warnings in the following days.
“Very strong showers are expected, although it is not possible to rule out, as of today, that they may reach torrential intensity locally , in addition to being persistent and accompanied by very strong gusts.”
And on Sunday 27, AEMET issued a special warning of phenomena starting on Monday 28, which again stressed the possibility of torrential rains for Tuesday.
“Tuesday 29th is expected to be the peak day of this episode, with the highest probability of these precipitations and intense storms expected in the area of the Strait, Eastern Andalusia, Murcia, eastern Castilla-La Mancha and the Valencian Community.”
“Today will be the peak of this episode, with the highest probability of these intense rainfalls and storms expected in the Strait area, Eastern Andalusia, Murcia, eastern Castilla-La Mancha and the Valencian Community. Due to the intensity and persistence of the rainfall, it is likely that in these areas the 150-180 mm may be exceeded locally in 12-24 hours.”
A few hours earlier, it had also raised the red warning to Málaga.
It is clear from the summary that even after the torrential rains had begun, the predictions fell well short of what actually happened in some areas, such is the difficulty in predicting DANAs.
It can be argued that government warnings were issued late but then again, while the forecast was for heavy or torrential rain at some points and in some areas, the recommendations would probably been the same as the usual DANAS, 'precaution' and not parking cars on flood prone land etc.
It was only after the disaster for example that people in some areas around Barcelona (El Prat) were instructed to leave work and go home one afternoon only for basically nothing to happen.
We are so used to seeing yellow and orange risk warnings and then 'nothing happening' that lots of people have become de-sensitised to the risks involved unless you happen to live in a flood prone area.
On the other hand there are reports of a huge shopping centre (Bonaire) in the Valencia region where management wanted staff to continue working well after the magnitude of the situation was evident. The order to evacuate came at around 8PM and by then workers were already trapped inside. There will probably be a criminal case brought for that situation.
Without doubt, once the data from this episode has been processed, the modeling efforts will improve but I doubt it will improve enough to precisely locate areas and intensities.
What can be improved and probably greatly is the reduction in loss of lives through better real time reactions by local governments and improvements to infrastructure and maintenance of that infrastructure.
We know that the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and that's one the reasons why we get these episodes at this time of year. Although we are used to them and mostly they are 'inconveniences' we are also seeing more and more 'extreme' incidents and that will probably be the 'new normal' going forward. Both in autumn for events like DANAs coastal events and heatwaves in summer and wildfires, droughts etc.
We had torrential rain yesterday for a short spell. Our pumps kept everything at bay but were starting to lose the battle when things eased off. There was no heavy flooding in the vicinity. A normal situation or even better than normal seeing as the surrounding streets didn't flood. We desperately need the rain but preferably not a month's worth in a few minutes which is what happened to us a year ago in a very localised DANA. As a result, we lost both lifts for two months and had a four thousand euro repair bill. So much rain fell in 30 minutes that it was impossible to pump it out faster than it was coming in. The last severe flooding here was in 2005 but now we are looking at new 'barrier' options including floodproof doors like the ones on ships etc because I doubt we'll have to wait another 20 years for the next severe flooding situation.