'It is all in ruins' from floods

UPDATE: 2 p.m.

The pictures of the smiling toddlers on the wall somehow survived.

Most everything else in the daycare — the cradles, the highchairs, the toys — was ruined when a crushing wall of water swept through Paiporta, turning the Valencia municipality of 30,000 into the likely epicenter of Spain's deadliest natural disaster in living memory.

“We have lost everything,” Xavi Pons told The Associated Press. He said the water level was above his head inside what had been the daycare run by his wife’s family for half a century, and he pointed to the knee-high mark where the mud reached.

“I have lived here all my life. This had never happened and nobody could have imagined it would,” Pons said. “All of Paiporta is like this, it is all in ruins.”

Authorities say at least 62 people died in Paiporta, of the 211 confirmed deaths from flash floods in Spain on Tuesday and Wednesday. The majority of those deaths happened in the eastern region of Valencia, and local media have labeled Paiporta the “ground zero” of the floods.

Four days have passed since the tsunami-like floods swept through the southern outskirts of Valencia city, covering many communities with sticky, thick mud. The clean-up task ahead remains gargantuan, and the hunt for bodies continues.

Many streets in Paiporta remain impassable to all vehicles but bulldozers, stacked as they are with piles of sodden furniture and household items and countless wrecked cars.

Every foot is caked with mud. Some people wield poles to steady their step as if walking these streets is a hike through a marsh.

A washing machine rests on its side among household junk in a church square. An enormous tree trunk rests inside a store that is missing a wall. An antique chests of drawers, paintings and a teddy bear, all still identifiable among the unrecognizable flotsam trapped in the all-consuming mire.

Lidia Giménez, a school teacher, watched from her second-story apartment as the usually dry canal that divides the town — “Barranco del Poyo” — went from completely empty to overflowing within 15 minutes. She called the aftermath of the flood “a battlefield without bombs.”

And it happened without a drop of rain falling on Paiporta.

The storm had unleashed a downpour upstream. That deluge then hurled toward Paiporta and other areas closer to the Mediterranean coast that were devastated by the flash floods.

Paiporta's residents received no flood warnings from the regional government on their cellphones until two hours after the dangerous waters rushed through.

The onslaught of water widened the river bank, tearing away buildings and a pedestrian bridge, stripping the metallic handrails from another bridge and pulling vehicles into the canal. Eight wheels are the only parts that remain visible of an overturned truck sunk in Poyo's muddy bottom.

The destruction could take weeks to clean.

Thousands of volunteers walked for more than an hour from Valencia city to help the people of Paiporta, carrying buckets, brooms and shovels as they waded into the grime.

Home owner Rafa Rosellón was waiting for heavy equipment to arrive to remove two cars — one half-resting on top of the other — that were washed away by the deluge and landed outside his home, blocking the front door. He had to unscrew a metal grating and slip though a window to get inside and witness the mess.

“I can’t do anything until those cars are moved,” Rosellón said. “The government forces that could do something, either from the regional government or the national government, have not done anything to help us. It’s us, the citizens and volunteers, who are doing all the work.”

Some 2,000 soldiers are involved in post-flood emergency work — searching for survivors, helping clean up and distribute essential goods — as well as 1,800 national police officers and almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday that they have rescued about 4,800 people and “helped more than 30,000 people in homes, on roads and in flooded industrial estates."

Only a small contingent of soldiers was pushing mud in Paiporta on Saturday, when Sánchez promised another 5,000 soldiers and 5,000 police were on their way to eastern Spain.

Just a few doors down from where Rosellón lived, a woman sweeping muddy water from her door burst into tears when asked what she had lost.

“I can’t find my husband, so all this doesn’t matter,” she said.

Another turn revealed a chilling scene; a street filled with half a dozen cars and criss-crossed with countless reeds that before the flood had been growing nearby. A man screams from inside a house: “There’s nothing more I can do! There’s nothing more I can do!”

ORIGINAL: 6:45 a.m.

Spain is sending 5,000 more soldiers and 5,000 more police to the eastern region of Valencia after deadly floods this week that killed more than 200 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Saturday.

In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands saw livelihoods shattered.

Four days later, authorities have recovered 211 bodies — most of them in the eastern Valencia region. They continued to search for an unknown number of missing people on Friday.

Thousands of volunteers were helping to clear away the thick layers of mud and debris that still covered houses, streets and roads, all while facing power and water cuts and shortages of some basic goods. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed into piles or crashed into buildings, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.

At present there are some 2,000 soldiers involved in the emergency work, as well as almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes — who have carried out 4,500 rescues during the floods — and 1,800 national police officers.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

What happened?

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo riverbed, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives, with many coming home from work on Tuesday evening.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads, railways and entered houses and businesses in villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents tried to take refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”

When the authorities sent the alert to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the phenomenon and asked them to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or garages, which became death traps.

Why did these massive flash floods happen?

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.

And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.

The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.

Has this happened before?

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, ground zero of the tragedy, claim that Tuesday’s floods were three times as bad as those of 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths and were the worst in the history of the tourist eastern region. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the city was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982, with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later, which broke rainfall records.

This week's flash floods are also Spain's deadliest natural tragedy in living memory, surpassing the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people in August 1996.

What has the state response been?

The management of the crisis, classified as level two on a scale of three by the Valencian government, is in the hands of the regional authorities, who can ask the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

At the request of Valencia’s president, Carlos Mazón, of the conservative Popular Party, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Saturday the deployment of 5,000 more soldiers who will join rescue efforts, clear debris and provide water and food over the weekend.

The government will also send 5,000 more national police officers to the region, Sánchez said.

At present there are some 2,000 soldiers from the Military Emergency Unit, the army’s first intervention force for natural disasters and humanitarian crises, involved in the emergency work, as well as almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes — who have carried out 4,500 rescues during the floods — and 1,800 national police officers.

When many of those affected said they felt abandoned by the authorities, a wave of volunteers took the streets to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic foods, hundreds of people have walked several kilometers each day to deliver supplies and help clean up the worst-affected areas.

Sánchez’s government is expected to approve a disaster declaration on Tuesday that will allow quick access to financial aid. Mazón has announced additional economic assistance.

The Valencia regional government had been criticized for not sending out flood warnings to mobile phones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some places and well after the national weather agency issued a red alert indicating heavy rains.