The death toll from historic flash floods in Spain climbed to least 205 people Friday, with many more believed to be missing, as the initial shock gave way to anger, frustration and a wave of solidarity.
Spanish emergency authorities said 202 of the victims were in the Valencia region alone, and officials warned that more rains were expected in the next days.
The damage from the storm Tuesday and Wednesday recalled the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn loved ones lost in Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory. Many streets were still blocked by piled-up vehicles and debris, in some cases trapping residents in their homes. Some places still don’t have electricity, running water, or stable telephone connections.
“The situation is unbelievable. It’s a disaster and there is very little help,” said Emilio Cuartero, a resident of Masanasa, on the outskirts of Valencia. “We need machinery, cranes, so that the sites can be accessed. We need a lot of help. And bread and water.”
In Chiva, residents were busy Friday clearing debris from mud-filled streets. The Valencian town received more rain in eight hours on Tuesday than it had in the preceding 20 months, and water overflowed a gully that crosses the town, tearing up roads and walls of houses.
The mayor, Amparo Fort, told RNE radio that “entire houses have disappeared, we don’t know if there were people inside or not.
So far 205 bodies have been recovered — 202 in Valencia, two in the Castilla La Mancha region and one more in Andalusia. Members of the security forces and soldiers are busy searching for an unknown number of missing people, many feared to still be trapped in wrecked vehicles or flooded garages.
“I have been there all my life, all my memories are there, my parents lived there ... and now in one night it is all gone,” Chiva resident Juan Vicente Pérez told The Associated Press near the place he lost his home. “If we had waited five more minutes, we would not be here in this world.”
Before-and-after satellite images of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the catastrophe, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape inundated with muddy waters. The V-33 highway was completely covered in the brown of a thick layer of mud.
The tragedy has unleashed a wave of local solidarity. Residents in communities like Paiporta — where at least 62 people died — and Catarroja have been walking kilometers (miles) in sticky mud to Valencia to get supplies, passing neighbors from unaffected areas who are bringing water, essential products and shovels or brooms to help remove the mud. The number of people coming to help is so high that the authorities have asked them not to drive there, because they block the roads needed by the emergency services.
In addition to the contributions of volunteers, associations such as the Red Cross and town councils are distributing food.
And as authorities repeat over and over, more storms are expected. The Spanish weather agency issued alerts for strong rains in Tarragona, Catalonia, as well as part of the Balearic Islands.
Meanwhile, flood survivors and volunteers are engaged in the titanic task of clearing an omnipresent layer of dense mud. The storm cut power and water services on Tuesday night, but about 85% of 155.000 affected customers had their power back on by Friday, the utility said in a statement.
“This is a disaster. There are a lot of elderly people who don’t have medicine. There are children who don’t have food. We don’t have milk, we don’t have water. We have no access to anything,” a resident of Alfafar, one of the most affected towns in south Valencia, told state television station TVE. “No one even came to warn us on the first day.”
Juan Ramón Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, said the aid isn't nearly enough for residents trapped in an “extreme situation.”
“There are people living with corpses at home. It’s very sad. We are organizing ourselves, but we are running out of everything," he told reporters. "We go with vans to Valencia, we buy and we come back, but here we are totally forgotten.”
Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, leaving many uninhabitable. Some shops have been looted and the authorities have arrested 50 people.
Social networks have channeled the needs of those affected. Some posted images of missing people in the hope of getting information about their whereabouts, while others launched initiatives such as Suport Mutu — or Mutual Support — which connects requests for help with people who are offering it. Others organized collections of basic goods throughout all the country or launched fundraisers.
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flooding 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.
Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like this week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a partial analysis issued Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a group made up of dozens of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.
Spain has suffered through an almost two-year drought, making the flooding worse because the dry ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain.
In August 1996, a flood swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people.