Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century have woken to scenes of devastation 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 with officials removing bodies from vehicles and an unknown number of people still missing.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Deadly floods roar through Spain’s southeast
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“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said on Thursday in reference to hundreds of cars and trucks stranded on roads stained brown with mud.
The aftermath of the floods looked eerily similar to the damage left by a strong hurricane or tsunami.
Cars piled on one another like broken toys, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in a layer of mud covered the streets of Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of Valencia, just one of dozens of damaged localities in the hard-hit region of Valencia, where 92 people died between late on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away cars, people and anything else in its path.
Regional authorities said late on Wednesday, it appeared that no one had been left stranded on rooftops or in cars in need of rescue after helicopters had saved some 70 people.
But ground crews continued to inspect vehicles and homes that were damaged by the onslaught of water.
More than 1000 soldiers joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors.
The defence minister said soldiers alone had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday night.
“We are searching house by house,” military official Angel Martinez told Spain’s national radio broadcaster RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is heading to the region to witness the destruction first hand as the nation starts three days of official mourning.
Thousands of people were left without water and electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were wrecked or roads were blocked.
The region remained partly isolated, with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid, which officials say will not be repaired for several days.
While the greatest human and material suffering was inflicted on the dozens of municipalities near Valencia city, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swathes of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula.
Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday night, although none of the nearly 300 passengers were hurt.
The skies showed some mercy for the worst-hit areas by stopping early on Wednesday.
But heavy rain continued on Thursday further north and the Spanish weather agency issued alerts for parts of Castellon in northern Valencia, the south of Tarragona in Catalonia, and the west coast of Cadiz in the southwest.
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.
Scientists link it to climate change, which is also behind increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating up of the Mediterranean Sea.
The violence of the weather event surprised regional government officials.
Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary”.
Yet the relative calm of the day after also gave time to reflect and question if authorities could have done more to save lives.
The Valencian regional government is being criticised for not sending out flood warnings to people’s mobile phones until 8pm on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some parts and well after the national weather agency had issued a red alert for heavy rain.