Spain is sending a research vessel to examine the victims of Valencia at sea as floods hit different areas

Barcelona – A Spanish marine research vessel is suddenly diverted from its normal mission to take on a new mission: To assist in the growing search for missing persons. Spain's deadly floods. As heavy work continued in the eastern province of Valencia to find victims of the disaster and clean up the mess left behind, heavy rain unleashed flooding north along the coast, near Girona.

The 24 crew members aboard the Ramón Margalef were preparing Friday to use its sensors and an underwater robot to map an area of ​​about 14 square miles of coastline – the equivalent of more than 5,000 soccer fields – to see if they can locate the vehicles that hit last week's catastrophic floods. washed up in the Mediterranean Sea.

It is hoped that a map of the sunken vehicles will lead to the recovery of the bodies. About 100 people have been officially declared missing, and authorities admit there may be more unaccounted for, in addition to the more than 200 reported dead.

But the bad weather was still causing problems in the northern province of Catalonia, where heavy rain caused flash floods on Friday in the town of Cadaques, sweeping away dozens of cars parked in the town's normally dry riverbed and piling up. bridge, causing a blockage that caused flooding in the city.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or major structural damage, according to Reuters news agency.

Pablo Carrera, a marine biologist who leads the Ramón Margalef mission off the coast of Valencia estimated that in 10 days his team will be able to send useful information to the police and emergency services. Without a map, he said, it would not be possible for the police to carry out an effective and organized campaign to reach the vehicles that end up at the bottom of the sea.

“It's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Carrera told The Associated Press by phone.

Many vehicles became death traps when a tsunami-like flood struck on Oct. 29.

The boat will join a wider effort by police and soldiers who have expanded their search for bodies and missing persons beyond the destroyed towns and roads. Searchers have used poles to probe through the mud while sniffer dogs try to pick up the scent of bodies buried in ditches and fields. Look at the beaches along the coast.

The first area Ramón Margalef explores is the stretch of sea that stretches from the Albufera wetlands, where at least some of the water ends up running through the villages and suburbs south of the city of Valencia.

Spain's state broadcaster said on Friday the body of a woman was found on the beach after she went missing when the water rushed through her town of Pedralba, an hour's walk from the coast.

Carrera, 60, is the head of the research fleet run by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, a state-funded scientific institute under the umbrella of Spain's National Research Council.

He boarded the Ramón Margalef in Alicante, on the southern coast of Spain, where it will depart and arrive in the waters off Valencia before dawn on Saturday. The plan is to go directly to work with 10 scientists and technicians and 14 sailors working non-stop in shifts. The boat also helped research the impact of lava flows reaching the sea from the 2021 eruption of the La Palma volcano in Spain's Canary Islands.

Finding a body at sea, Carrera said, is unlikely. So the focus is on big things that shouldn't be there.

An underwater robot boat loaded with cameras can dive to a depth of 60 meters to try to identify vehicles. Ideally, they'll try to get license plates, even though visibility may be limited and cars may be smashed to pieces or submerged in mud, Carrera said.

In time, he said his team will also assess the impact of flood flows on the marine environment.

The findings will influence the plans of other Spanish research institutions to study Spain's deadliest floods this century.

Spain is prone to the occasional deadly flood produced by autumn storms. But the drought that has hit the country for the past two years and record temperatures helped increase the floods, scientists said.

Spain's weather agency said 30.4 inches of rain fell in one hour in the city of Valencia, Turis, a national record.

“We've never seen a fall storm this big,” Carrera said. “We cannot stop climate change, so we must prepare for its consequences.”