2009 was a Christmas to remember for another reason. It had been raining on and off for a few weeks before Christmas, but over the holiday period we had a mini tornado. It blew in from Cadiz and caused damage across the countryside in-between before eventually reaching Olvera around midnight. The wind was ferocious and the rain torrential. I was caught in my friend Alfredo's bar during one of the first of many storms and waited for the rain to pass. When it was safe to go out again I walked along the low side of Olvera to my house. The noise of the river in flood in the valley below was a constant roar. It was only later that I learned the extent of the damage caused by the flooding.
Torre Alaquime had the worst damage. It lies on a bend in the river where there is a flat alluvial plain. During the night the river changed course and moved a hundred meters away from its normal route. In fact, anybody who lived along the rivers edge that night was in real danger. The rainwater that flooded down from the hillsides carried sand, rocks and boulders, making it an irresistible fluid force of enormous power.
Concrete fords that were laid down over pipes a metre in diameter, which, normally would allow the river water to pass beneath, were now blocked with trees and rocks. The sheer force of water lifted and overwhelmed the fords. The weight of the concrete fords must have been around 20 tons, but the flood carried them downstream to bury them in sand, silt and ultimately, consign them to oblivion.
The soil on many hillsides became saturated with water and turned to liquid mud. Landslides began to cause chaos. Roads were covered in sediment as the soil began to move en masse. The Grazelema road was lifted from below in metre square pieces. I don’t know how quickly these landslides happened, but I would not want to have been driving on that road that night and suddenly come upon a one metre high moving wall of mud and rock.
Later on a trip to Malaga I saw that half a football pitch had slid away on a hillside in Ardales. Some of the roads had subsided and were dangerous for weeks. Some were only repaired in 2012
A farmer near Setinil had parked his car outside his house. During the night the little brook near his house turned into a torrent of mud and rubble. His car was buried up to the windows. It was still like that a year later. Eventually he dug it out and towed it away.
The river in Setinil rose and eroded the soil from under the road along the rivers edge.
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