Aerials photographs have revealed the apocalyptic scale of destruction caused by the Valencia floods – as the disaster’s death toll hit 158 this afternoon.
The images taken on Thursday show wrecked cars abandoned on highways stained with brown mud and other bits of debris.
‘Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,’ Spain‘s transport minister Oscar Puente warned today.
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Parts of the Valencia region in eastern Spain were deluged by more than a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours on Tuesday causing monstrous flash floods.
The torrents of water destroyed whole villages and an unknown number of people are still missing with the death toll only expected to rise.
A 71-year-old British man who was suffering from hypothermia was identified as one of the dead on Wednesday afternoon.
Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away everything in its path.
The aftermath, which has seen streets piled high with vehicles and water streaming down usually busy roads, looks eerily similar to the damage left by a strong hurricane or tsunami.
Wrecked vehicles, tree branches, downed power lines and household items all covered in a layer of mud covered the streets of Utiel, just one of dozens of towns in the hard-hit region.
Police revealed today that looters have taken advantage of the catastrophic floods, robbing abandoned stores of high-value goods including computers, mobile phones and perfume.
Thirty nine suspects have been arrested in the Valencia region so far as the Civil Guard continues to crack down on people hoping to gain from the chaos.
Meanwhile desperate families have resorted to taking food and water from supermarkets, with heart-wrenching pictures showing children picking through the aisles of wrecked food stores.
The army has been brought in to manage the search and rescue operation with 1,000 members of the Spanish Armed Forces mobilised yesterday.
One terrifying clip shows an entire bridge in Valencia being washed away in the floods.
Paiporta bridge in the town of the same name was left completely devastated as the river beneath burst its banks and continued to rise.
Horrified onlookers watched in horror as the concrete structure crumbled into the deluge.
The scenes in Paiporta – where at least one baby was counted among the dead – are among many to have been captured by locals.
Rainfall in the town of Chiva in Valencia reached a staggering 491 litres per square metre on Tuesday, according to Spain’s meteorological agency.
The town, just 20 miles west of Valencia, endured this amount of rain in just eight hours – the typical amount of rain seen in a full year and an ‘extraordinary accumulation’, the agency added.
Another clip revealed the moment a helpless woman was swept away by unstoppable flood waters.
The unidentified victim could be heard screaming as the deluge pushed her down a waterlogged street.
Horrified onlookers stood on balconies above stretched out their arms in a futile attempt to come to her rescue in the chilling clip.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is heading to the region to witness the destruction firsthand as the nation starts a three-day period of official mourning.
Valencia today remained partly isolated with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid, which officials say won’t be repaired for several days.
It comes as yesterday, a British woman described how she miraculously escaped the deadly Valencia floods by climbing out of her car window before it was swept away.
Karen Loftus, 62, from Dorset, said she and her husband are lucky to be alive after they made the potentially life-saving decision to abandon their car.
The couple were travelling south on the AP-7 motorway to their home in Alicante on Tuesday evening when they were hit by a deluge of rain.
Mrs Loftus, who is the chief executive of UK-based charity Community Action Network, said the next thing they saw was a bridge in front of them being swept away.
She told Sky News that within ten minutes of being stationary, ‘the water had risen up and started to come into the car’.
The pressure meant they were unable to open the vehicle’s doors so they decided to escape through the windows.
