The 112 emergency number registered more than a thousand calls in Catalonia from noon on Saturday until 3:00 p.m. yesterday, Sunday. The incidents caused by the rains were mainly small floods. Of all, nearly 400 corresponded to the counties of Barcelonès and Baix Llobregat. The provinces most affected by the precipitation during the morning and yesterday morning were those of Barcelona and Tarragona.
However, one of the most complicated interventions by the Generalitat Fire Department took place in Maresme, in Vilassar de Mar, where yesterday they rescued a person from inside a vehicle trapped under a bridge. The car had been swept away by the water in the early hours of the morning near the Vilassar roundabout with Carrer Maria Vidal.
The storm also affected the Balearic Islands intensely. The Britannia cruise ship, 330 meters long, which was moored at the Ponent pier in the port of Palma, suffered the breaking of its moorings as a result of a gust of wind, which is why it was stranded. The wind dragged the ship to the other end of the dock until it collided with the oil tanker Castillo de Arteaga, which was docked at the liquid bulk dock.
As a result of the collision, the oil tanker suffered an overturn on the hull on the quay side, without any spillage into the sea. The Port Authority of the Balearic Islands (APB) activated the Maritime Interior Plan (PIM) at level 0 as a preventive measure. According to a first review, the damage did not compromise the ship’s navigation.
In another accident, a ship sailing from Valencia to Ibiza, with a total of 750 passengers on board, collided with the pier in the port of Ibiza yesterday due to the storm. The incident happened shortly after midday, when the Ciutat de Maó passenger ferry, owned by the Grimaldi shipping company, carrying 750 people on board, collided due to strong winds with the dock of the Ibizan port while making the docking maneuver
After the collision, the ship corrected the maneuver and docked at another dock, that of Botafoc Ibiza Marina, where it disembarked the passenger and their vehicles. As a result of the collision, the ship registered a waterway next to it, so the Maritime Administration prevented it from sailing on the return route to Valencia.
On the other hand, six cruise ship tourists who were at maritime station number 1 in the port of Palma were slightly injured when a window pane broke due to an intense gust of wind.
The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) predicted yesterday that this week, when the meteorological autumn begins, will be colder than normal for this time of year in almost all of Spain. Although there will be a rise in temperatures in the first few days, the forecast is for it to cool down again heading into the weekend. Aemet also anticipates that it will be a rainy week in the northern tip of the peninsula. The precipitation will spread to other parts of the north and east of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and during the last days of the week it is possible that it will rain in large areas of the country.
The minimum temperatures will increase in the north-west interior and the extreme south-west of the peninsula, decreasing in the south-east quadrant, north of Catalonia and the Canary Islands.
The presence of the Rea squall in the western Mediterranean will cause gusts of wind to be strong or very strong in the Empordà, the Balearic Islands, the Pyrenees and the Baix Ebre. There will also be strong intervals in the eastern Cantabrian, variable in the Straits and Alborán and trade winds with very strong gusts in the Canary Islands.
