This Monday, a particularly intense hailstorm hit the town of El Ejido, causing significant damage. Between 9:00 p.m. and midnight, emergency services handled over fifty incidents in the area due to heavy rain and hail. These incidents included flooding of homes, fallen trees and branches, road closures and structural collapses. The storm also caused substantial damage to local greenhouses, with estimated losses reaching millions.
The weather event predicted by Spain’s State Meteorological Agency (AEMET), known as a DANA, along with a rapidly intensifying storm, was expected to bring showers and storms to the Mediterranean side of Andalusia starting Monday evening. This led to orange weather warnings being issued for the eastern coastal regions, which were still active yesterday, the 29th, FreshPlaza informs.
The first estimates made by Asaja Almeria, whose technicians have been in the field since first thing yesterday morning assessing the damage reports, coincide with the data handled by the municipality: 4,500 hectares affected out of the approximately 13,000 hectares of greenhouses in El Ejido. “We believe that there could be more, but at this early stage it is very difficult to make accurate estimations and we prefer to be cautious when it comes to giving figures,” says Miguel Angel Serrano, technical secretary of Asaja Almeria. “However, we can say that the situation in the most affected area is catastrophic, with greenhouses that have collapsed and a lot of production damaged.”
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“Just taking into account the cost of replacing the affected roofs, without counting the damage to fruit or other structures, the losses are already estimated at millions of euros. The hail has been so severe and the storm so heavy that it has managed to pierce plastic sheeting of up to 800 gauges, reaching the plants and damaging the vegetables.”
“The affected growers are unimaginably devastated. In the night, when the storm stopped, many of them went in the middle of the night to check their greenhouses, going through flooded paths and finding their greenhouses completely destroyed. It has been a blow for them at a highly critical time of the season, especially for pepper growers, who have suffered the worst damages.”
Several cooperatives confirm that damage has affected different fruit and vegetable products, but “given the fact that in El Ejido there is a greater proportion of pepper crops, that’s where the greatest losses have been reported,” says a company in the area. “There are farms that had already been harvesting for a month, but many others were about to start.”
“Damage assessment is also difficult because there are areas where there has been no direct damage, but which have been flooded, so we’ll still have to wait a few days before we know if there will be any losses due to fruit rot,” says Miguel Ángel.
“However, we have to be cautious when it comes to reporting and stick to the facts, because the whole of Europe is now following the situation in Almeria and we have a responsibility not to cause unnecessary alarm in the market.”
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