Death toll from historic flooding in Spain soars to at least 158

3 weeks ago 3

Rescue operations after floods in Spain

Rescue operations still underway after floods in Spain, at least 95 dead 02:09

Dramatic flooding killed at least 158 people in Spain between Tuesday night and Wednesday, and the toll was expected to keep rising as search and rescue operations continued Thursday. Roads transformed into raging rivers with little warning as flash floods tore through the eastern region of Valencia, with muddy rapids flinging parked cars around like tin cans in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in a century.

The floods have left "dozens and dozens of missing", Angel Victor Torres, minister for territorial policy and democratic memory, told a news conference Thursday.

Some areas got more than a typical year's worth of rainfall in just eight hours. The death toll jumped by more than 50 on Thursday to at least 155 in Valencia alone, according to rescuers and the state-run news agency EFE. Three people died in other regions.

There were dramatic rescues, including a couple who were left trapped on the second floor of a house until they were scooped to safety by a front end loader. Denis Hlavaty braved the muddy onslaught trapped overnight inside a gas station.

"I'm smiling so I don't cry," he said as he walked away from the site of his refuge. "It was a living hell."

The Valencia suburb of Barrio de la Torre looked like it had been hit by a hurricane on Thursday. Cars were stacked on top of each other on mud-choked roads, with uprooted trees and downed power lines woven through the mess. Most of the confirmed deaths as of Thursday morning were in the town.

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"The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it's literally smashed up," local bar owner Christian Viena told The Associated Press.

Forecasters warned the lingering Mediterranean storm system could still dump significant rainfall further north, including in parts of northern Valencia, Zaragoza and Castellon. But in the hardest hit areas, the rains had largely stopped by late Wednesday, leaving rescue workers to turn to the grim task of recovering victims.

"Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles," national Transport Minister Óscar Puente said.

Spanish authorities deployed about 1,000 soldiers to help search for survivors and recover victims from under the mud-caked debris.

The country's defense minister said soldiers had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday night.

"We are searching house by house," military rescue unit leader Ángel Martínez told the RNE national radio network Thursday from the northern Valencian town of Utiel, where there were at least six people confirmed dead.

"The sorrow is the people who have died, and there have been many," said Encarna, a teacher in Utiel, as she surveyed the ruins of her home. "These are my savings, my efforts, my life. But we are alive."

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Climate scientists blame the scale of the disaster on a confluence of factors linked to human-caused climate change; the warmer atmosphere enables storm systems to retain more moisture, a slowing jet stream didn't push the storm away quickly, and the parched, drought-stricken Valencian soil couldn't absorb the catastrophic downpour.

The inundation left train lines and major roads impassable, leaving Valencia still partly isolated on Thursday.

The high-speed rail service linking the provincial capital of Valencia city to the national capital of Madrid was unlikely to be back in service before the weekend, officials said.

While Valencia was left mired in debris and devastation that was sure to take many weeks to clean up, the entire country was mired in grief.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was heading to the region Thursday — the first day of a three-day official mourning period — to see the destruction himself.

Chris Livesay