Crews searched for bod­ies in strand­ed cars and sod­den build­ings Thurs­day as peo­ple tried to sal­vage what they could from their ru­ined homes fol­low­ing mon­strous flash floods in Spain that claimed at least 158 lives, with 155 deaths con­firmed in the east­ern Va­len­cia re­gion alone.

More hor­rors emerged from the de­bris and ubiq­ui­tous lay­ers of mud left by the walls of wa­ter that pro­duced Spain’s dead­liest nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in liv­ing mem­o­ry. The dam­age re­called the af­ter­math of a tsuna­mi, with sur­vivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn their loved ones.

Cars were piled on one an­oth­er like fall­en domi­noes, up­root­ed trees, downed pow­er lines and house­hold items all mired in mud that cov­ered streets in dozens of com­mu­ni­ties in Va­len­cia, a re­gion south of Barcelona on the Mediter­ranean coast.

An un­known num­ber of peo­ple are still miss­ing, and more vic­tims could be found.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are dead peo­ple in­side some ve­hi­cles,” Spain’s Trans­port Min­is­ter Ós­car Puente said ear­ly Thurs­day be­fore the death toll spiked from 95 dead late Wednes­day night.

Rush­ing wa­ter turned nar­row streets in­to death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and busi­ness­es, sweep­ing away cars, peo­ple and every­thing else in its path. The floods de­mol­ished bridges and left roads un­rec­og­niz­able.

Luís Sánchez, a welder, was one of the lucky ones when the storm turned the V-31 high­way south of Va­len­cia city in­to a float­ing grave­yard strewn with hun­dreds of ve­hi­cles. He said he saved sev­er­al peo­ple.

“I saw bod­ies float­ing past. I called out, but noth­ing,” Sánchez said. “The fire­fight­ers took the el­der­ly first, when they could get in. I am from near­by so I tried to help and res­cue peo­ple. Peo­ple were cry­ing all over, they were trapped.”

Re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties said late Wednes­day it seemed no one was left strand­ed on rooftops or in cars in need of res­cue af­ter he­li­copters saved some 70 peo­ple. The ground crews, how­ev­er, were far from done.

“Our pri­or­i­ty is to find the vic­tims and the miss­ing so we can help end the suf­fer­ing of their fam­i­lies,” Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez said af­ter meet­ing with re­gion­al of­fi­cials and emer­gency ser­vices in Va­len­cia on Thurs­day, the first of three of­fi­cial days of mourn­ing.

Rail­ways and farms dam­aged

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.

Hu­man-caused cli­mate change has dou­bled the like­li­hood of a storm like this week’s del­uge in Va­len­cia, ac­cord­ing to a rapid but par­tial analy­sis Thurs­day by World Weath­er At­tri­bu­tion, com­pris­ing dozens of in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tists who study glob­al warm­ing’s role in ex­treme weath­er.

The great­est pain was con­cen­trat­ed in Paipor­ta, a com­mu­ni­ty of 25,000 next to Va­len­cia city where may­or Mari­bel Al­bal­at said Thurs­day that not few­er than 62 peo­ple had per­ished.

“(Paipor­ta) nev­er has floods, we nev­er have this kind of prob­lem. And we found a lot of el­der­ly peo­ple in the town cen­ter,” Al­bal­at told na­tion­al broad­cast­er RTVE. “There were al­so a lot of peo­ple who came to get their cars out of their garages ... it was a re­al trap.’

While the most suf­fer­ing was in­flict­ed on mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties near the city of Va­len­cia, the storms un­leashed their fury over huge swaths of the south and east­ern coast of the Iber­ian penin­su­la. Two fa­tal­i­ties were con­firmed in the neigh­bour­ing Castil­la La Man­cha re­gion and one in south­ern An­dalu­sia.

The re­gion­al pres­i­dent for Castil­la La Man­cha, Emil­ion Gar­cía-Page, said that at least one Guardia Civ­il po­lice of­fi­cer was among sev­er­al miss­ing peo­ple in the town of Letur.

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.

Green­hous­es and farms across south­ern Spain, known as Eu­rope’s gar­den for its ex­port­ed pro­duce, were al­so ru­ined by heavy rains and flood­ing. The storms spawned a freak tor­na­do in Va­len­cia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in An­dalu­sia.

Heavy rains con­tin­ued Thurs­day far­ther north as the Span­ish weath­er agency is­sued alerts for sev­er­al coun­ties in Castel­lón, in the east­ern Va­len­cia re­gion, and for Tar­rag­o­na in Cat­alo­nia, as well as south­west Cadiz.

“This storm front is still with us,” the prime min­is­ter said. “Stay home and heed the of­fi­cial rec­om­men­da­tion and you will help save lives.”

The search goes on amid the de­struc­tion

Over 1,000 sol­diers from Spain’s emer­gency res­cue units joined re­gion­al and lo­cal emer­gency work­ers in the search for bod­ies and sur­vivors. The sol­diers had re­cov­ered 22 bod­ies and res­cued 110 peo­ple by Wednes­day night.

“We are search­ing house by house,” Án­gel Martínez, with a mil­i­tary emer­gency unit, told Spain’s na­tion­al ra­dio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six peo­ple died.

Some 150,000 peo­ple in Va­len­cia were with­out elec­tric­i­ty on Wednes­day, but rough­ly half had pow­er by Thurs­day, Span­ish news agency EFE re­port­ed. An un­known num­ber did not have run­ning wa­ter and were re­ly­ing on what­ev­er bot­tled wa­ter they could find.

The re­gion re­mained part­ly iso­lat­ed with sev­er­al roads cut off and train lines in­ter­rupt­ed, in­clud­ing the high-speed ser­vice to Madrid. Of­fi­cials said that dam­aged line won’t be re­paired for two to three weeks.

A man wept as he showed a re­porter from na­tion­al broad­cast­er RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his home in Catar­ro­ja, south of Va­len­cia. It looked as though a bomb had det­o­nat­ed in­side, oblit­er­at­ing fur­ni­ture and be­long­ings, and strip­ping the paint off some walls.

The chaos al­so prompt­ed some to smash and grab goods. The Na­tion­al Po­lice made 39 ar­rests on Wednes­day for loot­ing stores in ar­eas af­fect­ed by the storms. The Civ­il Guard de­ployed of­fi­cers to stop the loot­ing of homes, cars and shop­ping malls.

Of­fi­cials ques­tioned over late flood warn­ings

The vi­o­lent 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 the of­fi­cial re­sponse. The Va­len­cian re­gion­al gov­ern­ment is be­ing crit­i­cized for not send­ing out flood warn­ings to peo­ple’s mo­bile phones un­til 8 p.m. 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 rains.

An­dreu Sa­lom, may­or of the Va­len­cian vil­lage of L’Al­cu­d­ia, told RTVE that his town lost at least two res­i­dents, a daugh­ter and her el­der­ly moth­er who lived to­geth­er, and that po­lice were still search­ing for a miss­ing truck dri­ver.

He al­so com­plained that he and his towns­folk had no warn­ing of the dis­as­ter that struck when the Ma­gro Riv­er burst its banks on Tues­day evening.

“I my­self was on my way to check the riv­er lev­el be­cause I had no in­for­ma­tion,” Sa­lom said. “I went with the lo­cal po­lice but we had to turn back be­cause a tsuna­mi of wa­ter, mud, reeds and dirt was al­ready en­ter­ing the town.”

Mari Car­men Pérez said by phone from Bar­rio de la Torre, a sub­urb of Va­len­cia city, that her phone buzzed with the flood warn­ing af­ter the rush­ing wa­ter had al­ready forced open the front door and filled the first floor, forc­ing her fam­i­ly to flee up­stairs.

“They didn’t have any idea of what was go­ing on,” Pérez, a clean­er, said. “Every­thing is ru­ined. The peo­ple here, we have nev­er seen any­thing like this.”

Va­len­cia re­gion­al Pres­i­dent Car­los Mazón de­fend­ed his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­age­ment of the cri­sis, say­ing “all our su­per­vi­sors fol­lowed the stan­dard pro­to­col.” —BAR­RIO DE LA TORRE, Spain (AP)

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Sto­ry by AL­BER­TO SAIZ, JOSEPH WIL­SON and TERE­SA MEDRA­NO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Joseph Wil­son re­port­ed from Barcelona, Spain. Tere­sa Medra­no from Madrid. Seth Boren­stein in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., con­tributed.