Team Canada set to compete in Spain tennis finals amidst country’s devastating floods

In less than two weeks, countries from around the world are scheduled to converge in Malaga, Spain for the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup tennis finals. Meanwhile, the country is in the midst of relief and recovery work from a devastating flood that has resulted in more than 200 deaths at least 80 people still reported missing.

On Nov. 5, the International Tennis Federation released a statement encouraging the public to join the ITF in donating to the Spanish Red Cross flood relief and recovery efforts.

“This is a humanitarian crisis and the ITF supports Cruz Roja in their mission to aid those affected by this disaster in Spain,” ITF President, David Haggerty said in the release on Tuesday.

“Tennis is more than a sport – it’s a global family and we have close connections with Valencia and its communities which have been the hardest hit. We urge everyone to extend their support in any way they can by donating today through the link below.” 

According to the World Meteorological Organization, Valencia was the worst hit with many places receiving more than 300 litres per square metre. While rain is expected this time of year, the WMO says the unusually catastrophic flooding points to rising temperatures.

“As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

Team Canada to compete in Billie Jean King Cup Finals and Davis Cup Final 8 amidst flood recovery

In the midst of the country’s flood recovery, the International Tennis Federation is continuing its preparations for the upcoming tennis finals where Team Canada plans to compete in the men’s and women’s finals.

On Nov. 6, Team Canada announced the matches in Malaga, Spain would be livestreamed for Canadians to watch on CBC Sports. The Billie Jean King Cup Finals run from Nov. 13 to 20 and the Davis Cup Final 8 run from Nov. 19 to 24.

“As the reigning champions, Canada’s Billie Jean King Cup team has earned a first-round bye and will play their quarter-final match against the winner of Germany and Great Britain on November 17,” stated Team Canada.

On the men’s team for Canada, “the 2022 champions will be playing in their third straight Davis Cup Final 8 and will begin their road to the title against Germany on November 20. A victory could set up a semifinal tie against Spain in what will be the last tournament of Rafael Nadal’s storied career,” the statement said.

See Also:

Andreescu withdraws from Canada’s BJK Cup team ahead of its title defence in Spain

The two tournaments take place in Malaga, nearly seven hours southwest of Valencia, the region hit hardest by the floods.

Read more on the flooding in Spain below.

What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were shattered.

A week later, authorities have recovered 217 bodies — with 211 of them in the eastern Valencia region and are searching for at least 89 people confirmed to be unaccounted for. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.

In many of the over 70 impacted localities, mostly located in the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia, people still face shortages of basic goods. Water is back to running through pipes but authorities say it is only for cleaning and not fit for drinking. Lines form at impromptu emergency kitchens and food relief stands in streets still covered with mud and debris.

Spain’s Consortium for Insurance, a public-private entity that pays insurance claims for extreme risks like floods, said Tuesday that it had received 21,000 claims of home insurance, 12,000 for business properties, and 44,000 for motor vehicles for flood damage. Those numbers are expected to grow.

“We can estimate that we are facing the biggest payout for a weather-related event that Spain has ever suffered,” said Mirenchu del Valle Schaan, president of Spain’s Association of Insurance Companies.

Thousands of volunteers are helping soldiers and police reinforcements with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the mire and the countless wrecked cars.

The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed away or trapped in underground garages, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.

The frustration over the crisis management boiled over on Sunday when a crowd in hard-hit Paiporta hurled mud and other objects at Spain’s royals, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional officials when they made their first visit to the epicenter of the flood damage.

Another five people died in Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

What happened?

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo canal, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn’t get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.

When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.

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.

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.

“Climate change kills, and now, unfortunately, we are seeing it firsthand,” Sánchez said Tuesday after announcing a 10.6-billion-euro relief package for 78 municipalities where at least one person had died.

Has this happened before?

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, at the epicenter of the tragedy, say the floods were three times as bad as those in 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the town was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982 with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later that broke rainfall records.

The flash floods also surpassed the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people, in August 1996.

What has the state response been?

Management of the crisis is in the hands of the regional Valencian authorities, who asked the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

Some 15,000 soldiers, National Police officers, and Civil Guard gendarmeries have deployed to the area in the largest peacetime mobilization of military and security forces inside Spain. Military trucks, heavy road equipment, Chinook helicopters, and a navy transport vessel are aiding with the distribution of relief aid, the cleaning, and the search for bodies. Two thousand firefighters and 500 local police are also involved.

The national government said that as of Tuesday authorities had rescued over 36,000 people, restored electricity to 147,000 homes and distributed some 130,000 bottles of water and 21,000 food rations.

When many of those affected said they felt abandoned by the authorities, a wave of volunteers arrived to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic foods, hundreds of people walked several kilometers to deliver supplies and help clean up the worst-affected areas.

The Valencian regional government has been heavily criticized for not sending out flood warnings to cellphones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some places and well after the national weather agency issued a red alert indicating heavy rains.

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By Joseph Wilson And Teresa Medrano from Madrid.