Cars were piled on one another like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in mud that covered streets in dozens of communities in Valencia, a region south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast.
An unknown number of people are still missing and more victims could be found.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said early Thursday before the death toll spiked from 95 on Wednesday night.
Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and everything else in its path. The floods demolished bridges and left roads unrecognizable.
Luis Sanchez, a welder, said he saved several people who were trapped in their cars on the flooded V-31 highway south of Valencia city. The road rapidly became a floating graveyard strewn with hundreds of vehicles. “I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing,” Sanchez said. “The firefighters took the elderly first, when they could get in. I am from nearby so I tried to help and rescue people. People were crying all over, they were trapped.” Regional authorities said late Wednesday that rescuers in helicopters saved some 70 people stranded on rooftops and in cars, but ground crews were far from done.
“We are searching house by house,” Angel Martinez, one of 1,000 soldiers helping with rescue efforts told Spain’s national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.
An Associated Press journalist saw rescuers remove seven body bags from an underground garage in Barrio de la Torre.
“Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said after meeting with officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days of mourning.
An extraordinary’ delugeSpain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood in recent memory. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also behind increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating up of the Mediterranean Sea.
Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like this week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a rapid but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, comprising dozens of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.
Spain has suffered through an almost two-year drought, meaning that when the deluge happened, the ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain, leading to flash floods.
The violent weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months.
A man wept as he showed a reporter from national broadcaster RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his home in Catarroja, south of Valencia. It looked as though a bomb had detonated inside, obliterating furniture and belongings, and stripping the paint off some walls.
In Paiporta, mayor Maribel Albalat said Thursday that at least 62 people had perished in the ommunity of 25,000 next to Valencia city.
“(Paiporta) never has floods, we never have this kind of problem. And we found a lot of elderly people in the town center,” Albalat told RTVE. “There were also a lot of people who came to get their cars out of their garages … it was a real trap.’
Farms damagedWhile the most suffering was inflicted on municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swaths of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula. Two fatalities were confirmed in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region and one in southern Andalusia.
Greenhouses and farms across southern Spain, known as Europe’s garden for its exported produce, were also ruined by heavy rains and flooding. The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia. Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia.
Heavy rains continued Thursday farther north as the Spanish weather agency issued alerts for several counties in Castellon, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia, as well as southwest Cadiz.
“This storm front is still with us,” the prime minister said. “Stay home and heed the official recommendation and you will help save lives.”
Frustration brews as residents hunt for basic supplies. As the shock dissipated, anger grew over the authorities’ handling of the crisis, both for their late warnings of the looming floods and the chaotic relief response.