Spain searches for bodies after floods kill at least 158

An unknown number of people are still missing, and more victims may have been found.

“Unfortunately, there are dead people in some vehicles,” Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said early Thursday, before the death toll rose from 95 on Wednesday night.

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 their path. The flood swept away bridges and left muddy ruts where roads once stood. The roads are unrecognizable.

Luis Sanchez, a welder, said he rescued several people trapped in their cars on the flooded V-31 highway south of the city of Valencia. The road quickly turned into a floating graveyard littered with hundreds of vehicles.

“I saw bodies swimming past. I called, but nothing,” Sanchez said. “The firemen were the first to take the elderly when they could get in. I’m from nearby, so I tried to help and save people. People were crying, they were trapped.”

Regional authorities said late Wednesday that helicopter rescuers had rescued about 70 people trapped on rooftops and in cars, but ground crews were still far from done.

“We are searching house by house,” Angel Martinez, one of 1,000 soldiers helping with rescue operations, told Spanish national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

An Associated Press reporter saw rescue workers pull 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 officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days mourning

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the worst flash flood in recent memory. Scientists attribute this to climate change, which is also the cause of increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating 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 quick but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, which includes dozens of international scientists studying the role of global warming in extreme weather. .

Spain has been hit by almost two years of drought, meaning that when the flooding happened late Tuesday and early Wednesday, the ground was so hard it couldn’t absorb the rain, leading to flash floods.

Stormy weather surprised regional government officials. Spain’s National Weather Service reported that more rain fell in the Valencian city of Chiva in eight hours than in the previous 20 months.

The man wept as he showed a reporter from national broadcaster RTVE the building that was once the first floor of his house in Catarraroia, south of Valencia. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside, destroying furniture and belongings and stripping paint from some walls.

The mayor of Paiport, Maribel Albalat, said on Thursday that at least 62 people had died in the town of 25,000 near Valencia.

“(Paiporta) has never had floods, we have never had these problems. And we found a lot of elderly people in the city center,” Albalat told RTVE. “There were also a lot of people coming in to get their cars out of their garages … it was a real trap.”

While the municipalities near the city of Valencia suffered the most, the storms hit vast areas of the southern and eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Two deaths were confirmed in the neighboring region of Castile-La Mancha and one in southern Andalusia.

Greenhouses and farms in southern Spain, known as the Garden of Europe because of its exports, were also devastated by heavy rains and floods. The storms produced a freak tornado in Valencia and a hailstorm that blew holes in cars in Andalucia. Houses were left without water as far away as Malaga in Andalusia.

Heavy rain continued on Thursday in the north as the Spanish Meteorological Agency issued warnings for several counties in Castellón, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia, as well as for southwestern Cádiz.

“This storm front is still with us,” the prime minister said. “Stay at home and follow official advice and you will help save lives.”

As the shock wore off, anger grew over the authorities’ handling of the crisis, both over their late warnings of impending flooding and the chaotic aid response.

Many survivors had to walk long distances in sticky mud to find food and water. Most of their cars were destroyed, and the mud, destruction and debris left by the storm made some roads impassable. Some pushed shopping carts through the wet streets, while others carried their children to keep them out of the mud.

About 150,000 people in Valencia remained without power on Wednesday, but about half had power on Thursday. An unknown number of people had no running water and relied on whatever bottled water they could find.

The region remained partially isolated, with several roads closed and rail lines disrupted, including the high-speed link to Madrid. Officials said it will take two to three weeks to repair this damaged line.

And as emergency personnel focused on finding the dead, survivors were left to find basic supplies and clean up the mess. Volunteers joined local residents in transporting wrecked cars, removing trash and sweeping up dirt.

With local services clearly overwhelmed, Valencia regional president Carlos Mason asked on Thursday if the Spanish army could help with the distribution of essential goods to the population. The government in Madrid responded by promising to send 500 more soldiers, national police and civil guards.

But necessity — and the post-apocalyptic atmosphere — drove some to enter abandoned stores.

The National Police detained 39 people for looting on Wednesday. The Civil Guard said it had arrested 11 people for shoplifting, and its officers were also deployed to stop people stealing from cars.

Some people said they had to steal supplies, especially those without running water or a way to get to stores that hadn’t been destroyed.

“We are not thieves. I work as a cleaner in a council school. But we have to eat. Look what I’m packing: baby food for a baby,” Nieves Vargas said at a local supermarket, whose doors were blown open by water and staff were unattended. “What can I give the child if we have no light.”

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Wilson reported from Barcelona, ​​Spain, while Leon reported from Valencia. Teresa Medrano in Madrid and Seth Borenstein in Washington, DC contributed.