"It has been a chaos, in ten minutes everything has flooded": Granollers takes the worst part of the storm

Granollers has taken the brunt of the storm this Monday. The capital of the Vallès Oriental region has accumulated 343 liters since Saturday night. Between midnight and ten o'clock this Monday morning alone, the rain left more than 95 liters in the city. All of this has caused a critical scenario, with the Congost river at its limit, many streets flooded, and even a large sinkhole on the road next to the courthouse that forced the evacuation of a building.

The unpredictability of the storm and the fact that the most intense downpour occurred during rush hour has multiplied the incidents. The Generalitat Fire Department had to rescue several people who had been trapped inside vehicles stranded by the rain in Vallès Oriental. The emergency services body has registered 44 alerts in this region until shortly before 10 a.m., of which 13 were for rescues and 21 for floods. The rest of the alerts were for fallen trees and structural damage.

“Two more minutes and my car would have been stuck at the roundabout,” says Glòria Ruiz, owner of the Destaca dry cleaners, which is right at the roundabout that provides access to the southern ring road of Granollers and which has been flooded by the torrential rains. This Monday she left home at 5 a.m. to arrive early at the shop, which was already full of water on Sunday. “It was raining inside, in 10 minutes everything was flooded,” she says, due to water leaks from the terraces of the apartments above. The complications on the roads due to the storm meant it took her almost two hours to get to Granollers from Canet de Mar, where she lives, just in time before the area was covered in water again. “Two more minutes and my car would have been stuck at the roundabout. It was chaos, in 10 minutes everything was flooded,” she says.

At the dry cleaners they managed by “making barricades with duvets and blankets” to prevent the water from ruining all the material they have there, but outside Glòria saw two people coming out completely soaked from their cars, which were left submerged at the roundabout.

At the same roundabout, the owner of the Merly's bar explains that his premises did not suffer any damage, but the area has been left “a bit destroyed.” All in all, he says that now they are “better than yesterday,” because during the morning the water has been receding and one can already walk on the sidewalk. On Sunday at half past five in the morning the area was full of water and mud, and furthermore the embankment over which the Rodalies tracks pass gave way. His premises is right in front, and he himself yesterday at dawn saw a man calling for help to get out of his car, which had been trapped at this roundabout. “The firefighters didn't take long and they rescued him.” Since yesterday no cars have been driving through here, it is noticeable that the institutes and schools have closed, and there are some curious people who come from the center to see how the area has been left.

The water has also forced a total interruption of traffic in Granollers due to the flooding of the tracks. As a result of this situation, the passengers of a train that had been stopped on the R2 North line were able to be evacuated without incidents at the Granollers Centre station.

Schools closed

The heavy rains have caused classes to be cancelled in the Vallès Oriental. The principal of the Antoni Cumella Institute in Granollers, Sira Melo, explains that they have spent some difficult hours; first thing in the morning, they had no instructions from the territorial Education services on whether to close or not. Meanwhile, they did not stop receiving questions from teachers, students, and families about whether there was class or not. “On the initiative of the school leaderships, without having any coverage or instructions from the authorities, we told them to use common sense, that if they saw they could not travel, they should not do so. It was impossible to even come on foot”.

Finally, they learned that the decision was in the hands of the City Councils, and that they could close. When they received the notice with an ES-Alert message to stay indoors due to the risk of the river overflowing, about ten students had already arrived at the school, as well as some teachers. This public high school is a few meters from the Congost river, in an area where there are also other schools and high schools. Access to the parking lot for teachers has been flooded. Inside, water entered the canteen, as happened on Sunday, in some baccalaureate classrooms and in a space that provides access to the gym, leaving about four fingers of water. “There was a waterfall, we also have leaks in the ceiling.” There are also floods in other centers such as the Marta Estrada high school.

Critical mobility on the coast and pre-coastal area

The heavy rains, which have fallen on ground already heavily saturated with water from the weekend's downpours, have had a major impact on the country's mobility. Rodalies had started the day with sections of the R1, R2, R4 and the R7, R8 and R11 lines without rail service, and has set up alternative road transport. The situation has been very complicated all morning, with constant service interruptions and reopenings. By midday, when the storm hit the Maresme region with greater intensity, it was also necessary to completely cut off the R1.

The situation on the roads has also been critical throughout the morning, with several routes closed due to the presence of water and long queues and traffic jams. Among the roads where it has been necessary to restrict traffic are the B-140 in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, the BV-5159 between La Roca del Vallès and Vilanova del Vallès, and the C-1415a in Castellar del Vallès due to landslides.

Although the Vallès Oriental and Granollers have taken the worst of this Monday's storms, the rain has also fallen hard in Barcelona again. In the Catalan capital, it was necessary to cut off a section of the Ronda de Dalt in the Llobregat direction again due to the downpours. For the fourth time in the last three weeks, the metro network has also been affected by the rain, with various cuts on different lines.