Harrowing moment firefighters battle in vain to rescue trapped woman, 26, from inside a Costa del Sol strip club during deadly flash floods
A HORRIFYING video showing firefighters desperately trying to save a woman trapped by flash floods in southern Spain has emerged online.
The 24-year-old Romanian woman drowned after being trapped inside a strip club near the Costa del Sol resort of Estepona where she worked after the area’s heaviest rain in more than 25 years.
Rescue divers tried to reach her in the low-level club after a friend she called as the water flooded the bedroom where she had been sleeping dialled emergency services.
Distressing footage showed them peering through the window’s barred windows surrounded by floodwater as they tried to find a way in.
She was already dead by the time firefighters reached her after the water level subsided and they were able to force a window to get in.
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Today it emerged the woman, known only as Alicia, had been sleeping in the club, called California, because she couldn’t find an apartment to rent without an employment contract.
A friend, recalling the last time she spoke to her when the flood victim rang her in a panicked phone call just after 9.30am to tell her she was in danger, said: “I told her to try to get out but she said she couldn’t because there was a lot of water.
“Then I told her to climb onto the bar which is quite high. I only had time to tell her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you the firefighters now.’ Then the line went dead.
“She came and went. Sometimes she was in Italy, sometimes in Greece, lately she was here.
"We’d known her for some time. She was a good person. We are all devastated.”
The friend, speaking to Spanish local Sur, added: “We were talking that morning, before the floods, and she said she was having great difficulties finding a flat because everyone asked her for an employment contract.
“She had been sleeping in the club three or four nights. I gave her the telephone number of an apart-hotel which had rented a room to another woman.
She said she was going to ring them the day she died.”
An electrical worker also lost his life after the van he was travelling in with two colleagues to repair a sub-station fault was carried away by flood water.
The tragedy happened last night in La Linea near Gibraltar as the three workers went to fix a blackout which had left the residents of the town’s northern suburb of El Zabal without power.
The local mayor declared three days of mourning after police found his body in a canal.
Schools in several towns including Estepona and nearby Manilva were closed today as authorities maintained an orange alert following the initial red alert sparked by the torrential rainfall.
A beach club in San Pedro near Marbella was carried away in the flash floods.
Two police helicopters rescued 23 people, including a baby and an 11-year-old boy, trapped on the roofs of their homes. Most of the air rescues occurred near the inland town of Alhaurin de la Torre near Malaga.
Drivers caught in the flash floods, the worst in the area since 1989, had to abandon cars by climbing out of their windows.
Flights into and out of Malaga Airport were delayed as roads to the airport became impassable after a month’s rainfall in just one hour around breakfast time yesterday/on Sunday.
Extraordinary scenes played out in San Fernando near Cadiz west of the Costa del Sol, where the rainfall was heaviest yesterday evening/on Sunday night, showed footballers abandoning a pitch that looked more like a swimming pool.
The Malaga Marathon was among the sporting events cancelled.