Spain is searching for bodies after the once-in-a-century flood that killed 95 people

Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century woke up to images of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives. The death toll is expected to rise as search efforts continue, officials remove bodies from vehicles and an unknown number of people remain missing.

“Unfortunately, there are dead people in some vehicles,” said Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente, referring to hundreds of cars and trucks stranded on roads covered in brown mud.

The effects of the floods were eerily similar to the damage left by a powerful hurricane or tsunami.

Stacked cars like broken toys, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items, all submerged in a layer of mud, covered the streets of Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of Valencia, just one of dozens of damaged locations in Valencia province. In the Valencia region, 92 people died between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and created rivers that ripped into the first floors of houses, carrying cars, people and anything else in their path.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed,” said Christian Viena, a bar owner in Barrio de la Torre.

Regional authorities said late Wednesday there appeared to be no one left stranded on roofs or in cars in need of rescue after helicopters rescued about 70 people. But ground crews and citizens continued to inspect vehicles and homes damaged by the water intrusion.

Over a thousand soldiers from the Spanish emergency rescue units, together with regional and local rescue workers, searched for bodies and survivors. The defense minister said that soldiers alone had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday evening.

“We are searching house by house,” Ángel Martínez, an official with a military emergency unit, told Spanish national radio station RNE on Thursday from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is traveling to the region to witness the destruction firsthand as the country begins a three-day official period of mourning.

Thousands of people were left without water or electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were destroyed or roads were blocked. The region remained partially isolated with several roads cut off and train routes disrupted, including the high-speed link to Madrid, which authorities said will take several days to repair.

While Valencia bore the brunt of the storm, two more deaths were reported in the neighboring Castile-La Mancha region. South Andalusia reported one death.

While the greatest human and material suffering was inflicted on the dozens of communities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their violence across large parts of the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula.

Homes remained without water as far south-west of Malaga in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday evening, although none of the nearly 300 passengers were injured.

Farmers’ greenhouses and fields across Spain’s southern arc, known as Europe’s Garden for its export products, were also destroyed by heavy rains, floods and winds. The storms triggered an unusual tornado in Valencia and a hailstorm in Andalusia that left holes in cars.

The skies showed some mercy for the hardest-hit areas by stopping early on Wednesday.

But further north, rain continued on Thursday and the Spanish weather agency issued a red alert for several counties in Castellón, the northernmost province of the Valencia region, and an orange alert for the south of Tarragona in northeastern Catalonia and the west coast of Cádiz, in the southwest.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding.

However, this was the strongest flash flood event in recent memory. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also responsible for ever-higher temperatures and droughts in Spain, as well as the warming of the Mediterranean.

The severity of the weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain’s national weather service said the Valencian city of Chiva received more rain in eight hours than in the previous 20 months, calling the flooding “extraordinary.”

But the relative calm the day after also gave time to reflect and ask whether authorities could have done more to save lives.

The Valencian regional government has come under criticism for only sending flood warnings to people’s mobile phones at 8pm on Tuesday, when flooding had already begun in some parts and long after the national weather agency had issued a red alert for heavy rain.

Andreu Salom, mayor of the Valencian village of L’Alcudia, told national broadcaster RTVE that his town had lost at least two residents, a daughter and her elderly mother who lived together, and that police were still searching for the missing truck driver .

“We had no signs that the river was about to burst its banks, which happened around 6pm when a wall of water and mud filled the town center and washed everything away,” he said.