They find a dead man in a car in a flooded tunnel in les Franqueses

BarcelonaThe Mossos d'Esquadra have confirmed that they have found the body of a dead man trapped inside a car in the tunnel of the Ronda Nord in Les Franqueses del Vallès, on the border with Granollers. It is a 43-year-old man who had been reported missing. He was located by company workers who were carrying out tasks to drain water from some of the areas that are still flooded due to the torrential rains of the last few days.

Police sources have explained to ARA that the body is pending official identification and an autopsy, which must determine the causes of death. Thus, at this time the investigation cannot confirm that the fatal victim can be attributed to the storm, but the police do rule out any criminal motivation.

Les Franqueses del Vallès, a municipality in the Vallès Oriental bordering Granollers, has been one of the areas most affected by the storm of these last few days. If death by drowning is confirmed, it would be the third fatal victim in Catalonia due to the series of downpours that began on Saturday, following those in Tordera and Montornès del Vallès.

This same Wednesday, the Mossos found a corpse in an advanced state of decomposition in a vehicle overturned in a stream in El Vendrell. The body has not yet been identified, but the owner of the car had been listed as missing since August 21, when another episode of torrential rain left more than 140 liters in this municipality.

All this while the storm has reached its final stretch, with less intense downpours in the afternoon. A similar scenario is expected for Thursday and will give way to a drop in temperatures at the end of the week. For now, however, the Generalitat's emergency teams are keeping the Inuncat flood plan activated in the emergency phase, although the danger level has dropped to two out of six, far from the five or six out of six of the last few days.

Search for a minor expanded

Meanwhile, this Wednesday some 3,200 users have still not recovered their electricity supply and the affected municipalities continue the work to recover from the impact of the torrential rains of the last few days. The Barcelona City Council has announced that it will deploy starting Thursday a special operation formed by thirteen teams to recover the areas affected by the rains in Torre Baró. The passage of the storm has left large amounts of material in this neighborhood that must be removed and exceeds the capacity of ordinary maintenance contracts. There has been widespread dragging of soil, vegetation, and other materials.

On the other hand, emergency teams continue searching for the twelve-year-old minor who disappeared this weekend in Granollers. The boy left home during the episode of storms that affected the city and left serious damage. Since Monday, a device in which almost half a thousand people from different bodies and volunteers are participating, both within the urban center and in the agroforestry zone, has been searching for him. This Wednesday, the search area has been expanded.

The search device was partially deactivated on Tuesday, when the volunteers who were participating were withdrawn due to the forecast of bad weather, and the firefighters stopped searching in flooded areas. Searches did continue in urban areas and other spaces without risk of flooding.

"We are investing all our efforts, all special resources, aerial means, drones, canine units, or underwater [teams] in case we identify any point that is flooded, and we cannot rule absolutely anything out, we do not rule out any hypothesis," explained the head of the Metropolitan North Emergency Region, Eduard Martínez. He also explained that they are reviewing absolutely everything and that they will continue with the tasks until they have no more arguments to do so. "This is going to take a long time," he added. This Wednesday, the volunteers have also been reactivated to join the search.

Emergency services also continue working to recover normality in the Vallès Oriental and Maresme, with the forecast of not withdrawing until there are no pending services to cover linked to the episode of torrential rains.