All Canarians remember what they were doing on March 31, 2002, when a cold drop settled in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, discharging up to 129 liters of water per square meter in one hour. Today marks the 20th anniversary of that fateful day, in which the Riada, as a result of torrential rains, killed eight people and left 12 missing and dozens injured in the island’s capital, becoming one of the largest catastrophes experienced in these lands.
The torrential rains began to fall between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Easter Sunday on the island capital, affecting a very small area. Outside of Santa Cruz hardly a few drops fell. In the midst of the catastrophe that was approaching, it cleared for half an hour, creating a false confidence in the population that those showers had ended. It was not so. It started to rain again with great intensity and with hail until at least 8:00 p.m., with some weaker precipitation remaining until midnight.
In those four hours that the cold drop lasted, a flood took the lives of eight people, at least 12 disappeared and the hospitals began to receive dozens of wounded. In addition, the rivers of mud that flowed through the city caused damage worth some 90 million euros, destroying at least 400 homes and leaving more than 70,000 residents without electricity.
No one was prepared for those events. In fact, the National Institute of Meteorology did not warn of the catastrophe and warned only of “moderate showers” the day before. It rained like never before: the city registered in a single day the record of accumulated water since records are kept on the islands, in 1869.
Today a bronze bust recalls what happened on that fateful 31-M with an inscription that reads: “The waters took lives from us, razed homes, left us tears, but the desire to improve of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz remained intact. . Hope and solidarity of a people who knew how to overcome misfortune and work for reconstruction were fed from desperation.”
