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Crews searched for bodies in stranded cars and soaked buildings on Thursday as people tried to salvage what they could from their destroyed homes after monstrous flash floods in Spain claimed at least 158 lives, with 155 confirmed dead in the Valencia region.
More horrors emerged from the rubble and ubiquitous layers of mud left by the walls of water that caused Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.
Cars were piled on top of each other like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, fallen power lines and household items, all stuck in the mud that covered the streets of dozens of communities in Valencia. An unknown number of people are still missing and more victims could be found.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people in some vehicles,” said Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente.
The 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 have destroyed bridges and made roads unrecognizable.
Luís Sanchez, a welder, watched as the storm turned the V-31 highway south of the city of Valencia into a floating graveyard littered with hundreds of vehicles.
‘I saw bodies floating by. I didn’t shout anything,” Sánchez said.
Days of mourning begin
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the first of three official days of mourning on Thursday after a meeting with regional officials and emergency services in Valencia.
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood in recent history. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also responsible for increasing temperatures and droughts in Spain and the warming of the Mediterranean Sea.
The biggest toll was concentrated in Paiporta, a community of 25,000 people next to the city of Valencia, where Mayor Maribel Albalat said on Thursday that 62 people had died.
While most suffering was inflicted on municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury across large parts of the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula.
Two fatalities were reported in the neighboring region of Castilla La Mancha and one in southern Andalusia. Emilion García-Page, regional president of Castilla La Mancha, said at least one police officer was missing in the town of Letur.
The heavy rain continued further north on Thursday when the Spanish weather agency issued a red alert for several provinces in Castellon, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia.
More than 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency rescue units joined regional and local aid workers in the search for bodies and survivors. By Wednesday evening, soldiers had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people.
“We are searching house by house,” Angel Martínez from a military emergency unit told Spanish national radio broadcaster RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people were killed.
Late emergency warnings cited
About 150,000 people in Valencia were without electricity on Wednesday, but about half had electricity on Thursday, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
The Valencian regional government is being criticized by some for only sending flood warnings to people’s mobile phones at 8pm on Tuesday, when flooding had already started in some parts and long after the national weather agency had issued a red alert for heavy rain.
As it happens7:05Spain resident says deadly floods have turned his city into a ‘disaster movie’
At least 95 people have died in Spain due to devastating floods. Marc Brimble lives in the hard-hit city of Catarroja. In an interview with As It Happens host Nil Köksal, he describes residents trapped in their homes, cars stacked on top of each other and water two meters high.
Mari Carmen Perez said by phone from Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of the city of Valencia, that her phone buzzed with the flood warning after the rushing water had already broken open the front door and filled the first floor, forcing her family to flee upstairs .
“They had no idea what was going on,” said Perez, a cleaner. ‘Everything has been destroyed. The people here, we’ve never seen anything like this before.’
The chaos also prompted some to smash and grab goods. The National Police made 39 arrests on Wednesday for looting shops in areas affected by the storms. The Guardia Civil deployed officers to stop the looting of houses, cars and shopping centers.
