Spain floods latest: towns destroyed and cars piled up as prime minister warns ‘stay at home’

As we reported earlier, Pedro Sánchez has arrived in Valencia and has been speaking to the media.

“The priority right now is to find those who are missing in order to alleviate the anguish that families are suffering,” he told reporters. “We will support the search by land, sea and air for as long as it takes to find all of the missing people.”

“Please, the storm continues, please stay at home. Please heed all calls from the emergency services, their needs, their recommendations.

“The most important thing is to save as many lives as possible. The AEMET is issuing alerts, I ask that these recommendations be heeded.”

More now on the impact of the floods on communities in regions in and around Valencia.

“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” said Spain’s transport minister Óscar Puente 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, just one of dozens of damaged localities in the hard-hit region, where 92 people died between late 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. It knocked down bridges and made roads unrecognisable.

“The neighbourhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” said Christian Viena, a bar owner in Barrio de la Torre.

Ground crews and citizens continued to inspect vehicles and homes that were damaged by the onslaught of water.

Why were yesterday’s floods in Spain so bad?

Ninety-five people are dead, an unknown number of people remain missing, while thousands of others are without electricity or phone service.

The intense rain was attributed to a phenomenon known as the gota fría, or “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

This creates atmospheric instability as the warm, moist air rising rapidly to form towering, dense clouds capable of dumping heavy rain.

See below for a visual guide to yesterday’s devastating events

Rescuers today face the painstaking process of searching stranded cars for any survivors of yesterday’s flash floods, with these pictures of a motorway in Valencia showing the aftermath of the torrential rain.

Spain’s transport minister has said bodies of dead are still likely to be trapped in vehicles.

Pictures coming in from Valencia show relatively calm conditions as the clean-up and search for survivors continues. But as we touched on in our post at 9.17GMT, a weather warning has been issued for part of the region already devastated by yesterday’s tragedy.

The AEMET state weather agency issued its highest level of alert for the province of Castellon. Further north in the Catalonia region, an amber alert was issued for the city of Tarragona.

Meteorologists said a year’s worth of rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia on Tuesday. The storm that caused the torrential downpours has since moved in a northeasterly direction.

“There are already very strong storms in the area, especially in the north of Castellon,” AEMET posted on its X account. “The adverse weather continues! Beware!” it added, saying people should not travel to the area.

Local authorities have not disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for after Europe’s deadliest floods in years, but Defence Minister Margarita Robles said late on Wednesday the death toll was likely to rise.

More heavy rain is predicted for the hardest-hit eastern Valencia region and other areas on the north-east coast today.

National weather agency AEMET launched a red alert for Valencia region on Tuesday morning and conditions deteriorated throughout the day.

But it was only in the early evening that the regional body in charge of coordinating the emergency services was set up.

And an alert sent by the civil protection service urging residents in the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia not to leave home was issued after 8pm.

For many, it was already too late. Motorists began journeys only to find themselves trapped on roads and left at the mercy of raging torrents of water.

“They raised the alarm when the water was already here, there’s no need to tell me the flood is coming,” fumed Julian Ormeno, a 66-year-old pensioner in the Valencia city suburb of Sedavi. “Nobody came to take responsibility,” he told AFP.

With weather forecasters issuing warnings beforehand, such tragedies are “entirely avoidable” if people can be kept away from surging flood water, said Hannah Cloke, hydrology professor at the University of Reading.

The devastating outcome suggests Valencia’s warning system failed, she said. “People just don’t know what to do when faced with a flood, or when they hear warnings.”

“People shouldn’t be dying from these kinds of forecasted weather events in countries where they have the resources to do better,” added Liz Stephens, a professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading.

“We have a long way to go to prepare for this kind of event, and worse, in future.”

You can read the full story below