Spanish pet owners warned after flooding fills streets with deadly mud

Volunteer vets have opened make-shift stations across Spain

A local man carries his dog to a relative's home in another town away from the disaster-affected area in Paiporta, Valencia (REUTERS)

Volunteer vets in Spain‘s flood-hit Paiporta are treating pets from the devastated town’s mud-filled streets at an improvised first-aid station with donated medicines and equipment.

Paiporta is among the Valencia suburbs considered “ground zero” of last week’s deadly flash floods that have killed at least 219 and left 93 people missing. Eight days on, its streets are still mired in mud and refuse - a hotbed for bacteria such as Leptospira to thrive in.

Some dog owners have started carrying their furry companions as they trudge through the muddy streets to prevent them from ingesting polluted water, an additional worry on top of the catastrophe’s human toll.

“Animals that aren’t adequately vaccinated are at high risk, which is why we stress that it’s almost better to take them out for walks on rooftops rather than outside,” said Marian Sancho, one of the vets manning the station inside a former store and marked with a handpainted sign.

Two veterinary volunteers take a dog to be treated at a hospital, in Paiporta, Valencia (REUTERS)

The damaged premises cannot be locked, so the drugs and supplies are removed after dark. Animals are treated free of charge and those needing comprehensive care are referred to a university clinic in downtown Valencia following triage.

Vet Nuria Capdepons said the animals were given antibiotics and antiparasitics to mitigate the risk of zoonosis, an infectious disease of humans transmitted from animals.

Laura, 20, held her rescue Yorkshire Terrier named Daly as Sancho inserted an IV with saline to treat dehydration.

“I brought her here because she had not eaten well for several days, she was throwing up, she had diarrhoea, and we don’t know what it is,” she said.

Laura, 20, holds a dog as she searches for a veterinarian on the muddy streets in Paiporta, Valencia (REUTERS)

Similar pop-up care centres are being set up in neighbouring ravaged areas, crewed by unpaid professionals and students from across Spain who rotate according to availability and needs.

Why did these massive flash floods happen?

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.

Laura, 20, holds her dog as she searches for a veterinarian on the muddy streets in Paiporta, Valencia (REUTERS)

And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.

The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.