BARRIO DE LA TORRE, Spain (AP) — Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain in this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday, 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 buildings and vehicles and an unknown number of people still missing. “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 looked like 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 localities in the hard-hit region of Valencia, 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.
The floods knocked down bridges and left roads unrecognizable. “The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” said Christian Viena, the owner of a wrecked bar in Barrio de la Torre. Regional authorities said late Wednesday it seemed no one was left str.