Rescue teams are searching for bodies in cars stranded by floods that killed at least 158 people in Spain this week.
One of the deadliest storms in Europe, the ‘historic’ flash floods swept away entire streets of cars, leaving them piled up outside homes engulfed in water.
‘Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles’, Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said today before the death toll leapt from 95.
Some people were heard crying for help as they were carried away by the torrents, leaving 155 dead in the eastern Valencia region alone.
One British man, 71, is among the dead, while a British woman made a ‘lucky’ escape through her car window moments before it was engulfed by water.
Luís Sánchez, a welder, helped save several people who were trapped in cars when the V-31 highway south of Valencia city while many were on the school run.
‘I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing’, Sánchez 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.’
Now search teams are scouring buildings and cars for bodies and survivors, with an estimated 300 people still in need of rescue.
Ángel Martínez is one of 1,000 soldiers helping with rescue efforts in Utiel, a town where at least six people died.
He told Spain’s national radio RNE: ‘We are searching house by house.’
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said: ‘Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families.’
Roughly 3,400 have already been rescued, including some with the use of helicopters.
Karen Loftus, from Dorset, said she and her husband were headed south to their home in Alicante on Tuesday evening when they were hit by ‘unbelievably heavy rain’.
Amid the destruction left by flood waters, with streets barricaded by walls of debris, an extra 500 soldiers have been called in to distribute basic goods
John Fahy, a 55-year-old teacher from Ireland living in Cullera, a seaside town ‘surrounded by water’ in Valencia, said there is no food in supermarkets.
He said: ‘We can’t leave our town because it’s flooded all around. There’s no-one in the shops in Cullera because there’s no food and there won’t be for a while.’
This has been blamed for a spate of looting that’s seen 39 people arrested, with 11 detained for thefts in shopping malls.
Water supplies have been cut off, roads have been churned up, and train lines have been blocked, with one high-speed train derailed by the floods.
Roughly 150,000 people in Valencia had been left without electricity yesterday. Half had had it restored by today.
Speaking in a supermarket with doors tossed aside by the water, Nieves Vargas said: ‘We are not thieves. I work as a cleaner at the school for the council. But we have to eat.
‘Look at what I’m picking up: baby food for the baby. What can I give to the child, if we don’t have electricity.’
