The devastating impact of DANA floods on Valencia’s farms and livestock

The flood in the Valencian Community caused 219 deaths, but also a massacre among animals. So far over 2,950 animals including sheep, pigs, horses and poultry have been found dead on farms and ranches

The flooding caused by DANA turned out to be disastrous for areas within the Valencian Community and seriously affected agriculture and ranching. The Valencian Generalitat-Region, through its Department of Agriculture, started the collection of dead animals to avoid creating public health risks by spreading diseases.

Striking figures: on October 30th, over 2,950 animals-small ruminants, pigs, horses, and poultry–appeared dead in farms across territories hit the hardest like L’Horta Sud, La Ribera Alta, La Ribera Baixa, Hoya de Buñol y Requena.

Flooding damages feed supplies, potable water and forage

The DANA phenomenon has been estimated to cause damage of approximately $13.1 billion, affecting not only farms but also educational and industrial infrastructure. To livestock farmers, in addition to the structural damages and loss of access to forage, decimation of their herds has put their economic survival in jeopardy.

For his part, Cristóbal Aguado, the president of the Young Farmers Association of the Valencian Community (AVA-Asaja), indicated that many farms had great flooding affecting feed inventories, drinking water, and forage, in addition to the death of animals from these facilities. He indicated that reaching the affected sites and supplying food and water to the surviving animals should be an urgent priority to prevent the deterioration of this situation.

In response to the emergency, Tragsa and the public entity Vaersa, appointed by the Consell, have carried out some 1,000 operations in many different farms to help meet the emergency calls. In addition to carcass removal, support operations have begun with the aim of recovering access routes and supplying food and resources to those farms that are still cut off.

How to support affected animals and farmers

What can be done to help? Several solidarity initiatives have been created after this tragedy. In the Valencian Community, through societies like PRECVAL and the Equestrian Federation of the Community, points of collection for donations were established.

And the results are starting to materialize. PRECVAL’s president, José Antonio Esteban, wanted to thank the scores of associations, federations and donors from all over Spain that have so far contributed to support more than 100 farms.

The efforts to save the surviving animals and help the sector recover from this disaster, which is still an unending catastrophe over a week later, are never ending for everybody-from people with 219 confirmed deaths and around a hundred missing, the figures are not confirmed because those are just reported cases and data need to be cross-checked to 54 unidentified bodies recovered-to helpless animals trapped in water and mud with no way out.