Death toll from Spain floods passes 200 as rescue teams search for missing | Flood news

Rescuers in Spain are trying to reach areas still cut off by heavy rain, as the death toll from catastrophic flooding rose to 205 in Europe’s worst weather disaster in five decades.

In Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of this week’s destruction, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to hunt for the missing and help survivors of the storm, leading to a new weather alert in Huelva in the south-west of Spain.

Officials said the death toll is likely to continue rising. It is already the worst flood disaster in Spain’s modern history and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.

Within minutes on Tuesday, flash floods caused by heavy rains swept away everything in their path. Roads, railway lines and bridges were destroyed when rivers burst their banks. The floods also inundated thousands of hectares of farmland.

Thousands of people across Valencia took part in a massive clean-up campaign on Friday. Residents of Chiva, one of the towns that witnessed the worst rainfall, carried buckets, shovels, brooms, mops and water bottles.

“About a year’s worth of rain fell in one day, and as you can see, this has had a devastating effect on the community. They are still disconnected – there is no electricity, no connection to any electricity system,” Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said in a report from Chiva.

The Valencian city received more rain in eight hours on Tuesday than in the previous 20 months, and water poured over a gully that crosses the city, destroying 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.”

“It is the community itself that needs to come together and arrange facilities for everyone as they have had no help from the regional government so far,” Gallego said, noting that people from other towns came to help clear the rubble.

‘It’s all gone in one night’

So far, 205 bodies have been recovered: 202 in Valencia, two in the Castille-La Mancha region south and east of Madrid, and another in Andalusia in southern Spain.

Law enforcement authorities have rescued more than 4,500 people trapped by the floods, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said at a news conference from Valencia.

Members of the security forces and 1,700 soldiers from the emergency unit are searching for an unknown number of missing persons. Another 500 soldiers will be deployed on Saturday, regional authorities said.

In the meantime, more storms are expected. The Spanish weather agency has issued warnings of heavy rainfall in Tarragona, Catalonia, and part of the Balearic Islands.

In Valencia, many streets were still blocked by piled-up vehicles and debris, in some cases trapping residents in their homes. Some places still have no electricity, running water or stable telephone connections.

“The situation is unbelievable. It is a disaster and there is very little help,” Emilio Cuartero, a resident of Massanassa on the outskirts of the city of Valencia, told The Associated Press. “We need machines and cranes to reach the locations. We need a lot of help, bread and water.”

Speaking to the AP, Chiva resident Juan Vicente Perez said: “I’ve been there all my life. All my memories are there. My parents lived there, … and now it’s all gone in one night.”

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 awash in muddy water. The V-33 highway was covered with a thick layer of mud.