ROLAND WHITE reviews Why Cities Flood: Spain's Deadly Disaster - 'Astonishing footage of Spain's killer flood was an hour of non-stop drama'
The news is very good at fires and rocket attacks and waves lashing the coastline in high winds, but less confident about issues that involve dull people in suits sitting around a table.
Why Cities Flood: Spain 's Deadly Disaster was pretty much an hour's worth of non-stop drama as it recalled flash floods which overwhelmed parts of southern Spain in October last year, killing more than 230 people.
There were people dangling from balconies over raging waters as neighbours frantically tried to pull them to safety.
One street scene had so many cars piled up on top of each other that it looked more like a scrapyard.
A lot of the drama came from mobile phone footage. As a motorist tried to escape from an underground car park, he filmed the water rising rapidly up his door and noted (in Spanish), with admirable understatement: 'This is getting tricky.'
Tricky? He was lucky to escape with his life. In another basement car park, seven people died.
British visitor Karen-Marie Loftus and her husband were on a motorway near Valencia when they were caught in the storm. 'I had never seen rain quite like it,' she said.
Just five minutes after the storm began, water started seeping into the car. Then the engine cut out. By now, the water was so high that they couldn't open the doors.
They managed to escape through a window, and a Moroccan lorry driver let them into his cab and carried them to safety.
Four hours later, they received a mobile phone alert, letting them know heavy rain was on the way.
Those alerts weren't the only way that the people of the region felt let down by government. As one flood victim complained: 'The army, police, civil guard — they were nowhere to be seen.'
It was a civilian army of neighbours — arriving in their thousands with mops and buckets and spades — who began the clear-up work.
When King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the area, they were pelted with mud.
In between the astonishing footage, Why Cities Flood wasn't short on analysis. The mobile phone alerts were late, it appears, because sensors were giving misleading data.
And U.S. severe storms expert Jonathan Gourley explained how difficult it was to predict intense rainfall.
Is it going to be a catastrophic event, or just a normal thunderstorm?
Global warming got a brief mention, but the biggest danger seems to be our bizarre appetite for building on flood plains.
Why Cities Flood should be required viewing for any councillor who is about to grant planning permission for a housing estate.
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Advertisement Hawaii governor Josh Green earlier said helicopters and high-water vehicles were ready to go in case authorities needed to rescue people. Oahu residents evacuate Ewa Beach (Michelle Bir/AP) Oregon Department of Emergency Management said small tsunami waves were expected along the coast. It urged people to stay away from beaches, harbours and marinas and to remain in a safe location away from the coast until the advisory is lifted. 'This is not a major tsunami, but dangerous currents and strong waves may pose a risk to those near the water,' the department said. A tsunami of less than a foot was forecast to hit parts of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and waves of up to 1.4ft above tide levels were observed in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Advertisement Russia's Oceanology Institute said tsunami waves might have been as high as 30 to 50ft in some sections of the Kamchatka coast. Later, authorities on the peninsula and the Kuril islands cancelled tsunami warnings, though they said some risk remained. The regional branch of Russia's Emergency Ministry on Kamchatka warned that scientists expect aftershocks at magnitudes of up to 7.5. It said more tsunamis are possible in Avacha Bay, where the regional capital of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is located. People take shelter at a temporary evacuation site in Kushiro, Hokkaido, northern Japan (Kyodo News/AP) Oleg Melnikov, head of the regional health department, said a few people hurt themselves while rushing to leave buildings and a hospital patient was injured while jumping out of a window. He said all injured people were stable. A video released by Russian media outlet showed a team of doctors at a cancer clinic on Kamchatka holding a patient and clutching medical equipment as the quake rocked an operating room, before continuing with surgery after the shaking stopped. 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