"We need to rethink roads and railways to adapt them to the climate crisis."
The rains that have fallen in recent days have saturated the ground with water.
BarcelonaThe leading hypothesis for the Gelida train accident is that the wall the train crashed into gave way due to the relentless rain of the last five days. In this municipality of the Alt Penedès region, it is estimated that nearly 90 liters per square meter have accumulated since last Friday; this is by no means an exceptional amount of rain, although it is surprising given that it occurred in January, a month that is usually quite dry in Spain. But it's raining on already saturated ground, and five consecutive days of rain have further dampened an area that is becoming very waterlogged. In fact, it hasn't stopped raining since mid-December, and more than 200 liters per square meter have already fallen in the Gelida area, nearly a third of the average annual rainfall. "After so much continuous rain, there comes a point when the ground's capacity is exhausted and it becomes saturated, which alters the properties of the materials and can lead to problems like the ones we're seeing," explained Roberto Espínola, a member of the College of Geologists of Catalonia, in statements to ARA. Espínola emphasizes that clay soils like those found in Gelida are especially vulnerable to heavy and prolonged rainfall. "They have the capacity to absorb water into their structure; this causes them to swell and expand, but then they can expel the water, which produces instability in the ground, with possible cracks, landslides, or rockfalls," Espínola asserts. "There are abundant clay materials in the Gelida area."
Therefore, this context is conducive to landslides or mudslides, as is believed to have occurred in the train accident in Gelida, which happened on one of the peak days of the easterly storm.
Poorly prepared infrastructure
The climate crisis has accelerated in recent years, causing increasingly extreme weather events. More ferocious storms, torrential rains, and more frequent and intense heat waves are also impacting the condition of roads and railways, among other things. "Infrastructure was conceived and designed at a time when none of this was happening; it must be rethought to adapt to the new climate context, which requires national decisions with the involvement of all social, political, and economic stakeholders," says Espínola. The expert cites as an example the increasingly frequent problems caused by storms at sea on railway lines that run close to the coast, especially the R1 line, following the recent storm. Glory as the most serious. "Zero risk doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean the necessary efforts and investments won't be made to minimize this risk," he explains. And he concludes: "Maintenance and monitoring of infrastructure are essential to control its condition and act swiftly in the face of events resulting from climate change."
