The balance of the impressive hailstorm that fell this Thursday in Vitoria-Gasteiz leaves one injured and extensive material damage to street furniture, trees and vehicles. The injured man needed to be transferred by ambulance as a result of the impact of large hail balls.
A front crossed the city from north to south around 8:15 p.m. this Thursday and unloaded a significant amount of hail, with ice the size of golf balls.
The people of Vitoria had to take refuge in garages, bridges and underground car parks, after being surprised by the forceful rainfall.
Several streets were flooded because the branches and leaves of the trees blocked the drains, which caused traffic difficulties in the Basque capital, which had not experienced a storm of this magnitude since July 1, 2009.
The Vitoria City Council has reported that at midnight the different municipal services continued to work on public roads in the buildings that require the most urgent attention due to the ingress of water.
At the moment it is known that a person was injured in the central Dato street by the impact of the huge balls of hail that fell. This person was transferred by ambulance to a health center, although it is not ruled out that there are more cases.
The damage affects the entire city, but especially the Casco Viejo, where there are numerous broken windows in viewpoints.
At different points there are buildings affected by broken glass and the ingress of water: residential buildings, civic centers, health centers and various facilities.
In addition to the municipal staff, the company in charge of controlling the city’s traffic lights has had to intervene to repair the problems detected, especially at the most dangerous junctions.
The cleaning subcontractor also works to remove the most dangerous obstacles fallen on public roads.
Vehicle damage has also affected police vehicles, which have dents and some broken windows. Likewise, traffic had to be cut off in some tunnels while work continues to reduce the pools of water in different streets.
The City Council will prepare more detailed reports to find out the impact of this hailstorm, as reported.
The mayoress of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Maider Etxebarria, has assured that the capital of Álava “will take days to recover normality”, after the “exceptional” hail storm that hit the city on Thursday.
Etxebarria has appeared this Friday at a press conference, together with the Councilor for Citizen Security, Iñaki Gurtubai, to make a first assessment of the damage caused by the hail storm.
The Councilor for Citizen Security has recounted that the Firefighters and the Local Police received a total of 510 citizen calls to deal with emergency episodes due to hailstorms; flooding in homes, garages and roads, as well as glass breakage.
“The Speis responded to 130 emergency calls out of the 200 calls that came in yesterday, prioritizing the most urgent actions”, with an operation of “20 operators”, as well as with several vehicles. “The greatest impact occurred in Correría, Herrería and Zapatería streets in the Medieval Quarter with numerous viewpoints broken,” he specified.
For its part, the Local Police received “310 calls from citizens, four times more than in a normal day”, of which they answered “267 in the first four hours, from 8:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m..”
