Juan Carlos Galvez and his team were working out of a mud-damaged building, distributing sanitary supplies and food to Valencia residents and cleaning out their houses after devastating floods, when he heard a story that chilled him.

Galvez, the head of the emergency response group REMAR SOS, had gone to thank the older man whose building the team was using as a distribution center and headquarters. His host was gracious. Then he drew Galvez’s attention to the view out the window: a valley stripped bare except for a single large tree.

When torrential rains swept over eastern Spain in October and November of 2024, the resulting floodwaters killed 232 people, and placed many more in immediate danger. The building’s owner had been one of them.

Standing in that valley when floodwaters suddenly burst through, he had been dragged along in the fierce current. He’d managed to seize hold of that one tree as he was swept along, and to use materials from passing debris to lash himself to its trunk.

The deluge caused catastrophic damage across a number of eastern Spanish communities, including the municipalities of Pobla de Vallbona, Alfafar, and Benetússer – where the emergency response organization Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras spent days searching for survivors before turning to restoring heavily damaged schools.

“It wasn’t so much the high flooding” that made responding difficult, BUSF director general Jesus Lluch Ferrer explained through a translator. “There was so much rainfall in so little time, the levels rose up pretty high, but came down pretty quickly.” Instead, he said, for most of the people who survived the initial deluge, the dangers were exposure to contaminated water and economic devastation.

In particular, he was concerned about the contamination of houses, businesses, and community buildings like schools that his team saw. “When you try to get rid of mud, you need special machinery, which local agencies didn’t have,” he explained. His team has focused on cleaning and restoring local schools contaminated by mud and floodwaters, so that they are safe for students to return.

“It’s so kids can come back and have the school they deserve and were accustomed to,” he said.

“It Happens Everywhere”

Ferrer has responded to many international disasters, including Haiti’s cataclysmic 2010 earthquake. He found it unnerving to see such high levels of devastation in a high-income country like Spain.

“It wasn’t something we expected,” he said. Many areas affected by floods were unreachable, and cut off from communications, for days. Coordination was slow in coming. Some communities went a full week without access to potable water or food supplies.

REMAR SOS is the emergency branch of the larger, Spain-based organization REMAR, and Galvez, too, has responded to many international emergencies. He currently lives in Romania, but he and his team were at a conference in Spain when the flooding began. He, too, was taken aback by the level of devastation he witnessed.

“No one was expecting anything like that in Spain,” he said through a translator. He cautioned that a country’s median income level or existing infrastructure isn’t a good indicator of its emergency preparedness: “No country is ready for a disaster like this to respond immediately. The chaos, the tardiness of the response, it happens everywhere.”

Galvez cautioned that not all response is automatically a good thing. “Everybody wants to help, but a lot of times the help is not organized and it brings more disruption,” he said. In addition, help often disappears too quickly, with emergency responders pulling out within days or weeks, leaving health threats and economic devastation – both of which continue to be serious issues in eastern Spain – insufficiently addressed.

Both BUSF and REMAR SOS have remained in Valencia communities, clearing out and restoring flood-damaged buildings with specialized equipment. BUSF has focused on local schools – REMAR SOS on community businesses and other essential buildings. Galvez explained that REMAR SOS is also providing hygiene supplies to prevent waterborne diseases and other serious health threats from the contaminated floodwaters, and boxes of food to local families, for whom economic impacts were severe.

“A lot of them lost their businesses, so they have no way of providing for their families,” he explained.
An estimated 48,000 businesses were affected by the flooding. Small businesses, including shops and restaurants, manufacturers, and service providers, were particularly hard hit, with owners and workers complaining that compensation has been slow to arrive.

Ferrer was impressed by the strong community bonds he saw among people affected by the flooding. He described seeing families fleeing the disaster in their cars stop to dig other people’s wheels out of the mud. “A lot of times, when you’re facing these disasters yourself, you’re worried about your home, your family,” he said. “The people were very willing to help and support other people.”

“A Need That’s Growing”

REMAR SOS has committed to remaining in Valencia for a full year after the disaster. “That’s where Direct Relief luckily came in,” Galvez said of the $250,000 emergency grant that Direct Relief awarded the organization to maintain sanitation and prevent waterborne diseases in impacted communities. “It was a blessing that they came out of nowhere.”

A second grant of $70,000 was awarded to BUSF, a long-term Direct Relief partner. The emergency response the organization conducted was extensive, demanding medical evacuations, specialized equipment such as generators and water extraction pumps, and first aid measures. The funding from Direct Relief will help BUSF replenish its medical stockpile and emergency equipment, so they are prepared for the next disaster.

Direct Relief has supported partners in Europe for many years: shipping long-term material medical aid to providers in North Macedonia, Romania, and Belarus; providing emergency support to communities in the Balkans amid natural disasters and to Italy during Covid-19; and supporting mobile and primary health care for refugees and asylum seekers in Greece, among other response work. The organization has also worked with healthcare partners across Ukraine and in Poland to support Ukrainians impacted by the ongoing war with Russia, from pediatric mental health to prosthetics and rehabilitation services for amputees.

Alexandra Kelleher, an emergency response senior program manager at Direct Relief, said that higher-income countries often need less systemic support, but natural disasters or outbreaks of conflict that affect the most economically vulnerable people often require a localized emergency response like the one in eastern Spain, or the support to refugees and asylum seekers sheltering in Greece. Fluctuations in the global economy, political upheaval, and changing attitudes toward international aid have all affected the humanitarian resources available.

“Climate and conflict disasters are occurring more frequently, and economies are fluctuating. So there’s a need that’s growing as support becomes more inconsistent,” she explained. Direct Relief’s ongoing presence in Europe allows it to act as a quick-moving emergency resource when disasters occur.

“We want to help,” Kelleher said.