Videos show floods overwhelming Valencia, leaving 2,000 missing

Reports from some areas of ‘people living with corpses at home’

Almost 2,000 people remain missing, Spanish authorities said on Friday, as the death toll from the worst floods in the country’s modern history rose to at least 205.
The army joined rescue efforts as teams of workers combed through wrecked homes and cars in a desperate search for survivors.
Military pumping vehicles extracted floodwaters from basements and car parks, often disgorging corpses as they worked.
On Friday, video footage revealed the incredible speed at which floodwaters travelled through the streets of Valencia, submerging the streets as they carried debris from homes, shops and cars.
In one clip taken at 7.40pm in the town of Benetússer, cars come to a standstill in the middle of the road as residents flee a deluge of murky water. By 8pm, the footage shows cars being dragged away by the ferocious floodwater.
Authorities admitted they were struggling to reach some rural areas – where residents are stranded without electricity, running water or phone connections – with roads blocked by piled-up vehicles, debris and thick mud.
In badly hit areas such as the Valencian suburb of Alfafar and town of Paiporta, locals accused the government of abandoning them to their fate after a long-delayed initial alarm about the flood’s severity.
A further 500 troops will be deployed to the stricken areas on Saturday, bolstering the 1,700 already in place, the government said.
The Integrated Operational Coordination Centre (Cecopi), which manages the missing persons database, said it had been inundated with calls from those who have friends and family missing.
It is hoped the missing-persons figure will come down as more people are located by rescuers over the weekend. Some 600 of 2,500 people originally reported missing were found on Friday.
However, around 70 bodies located by emergency services are also yet to be collected, according to El Diario.
Rescuers fear more bodies will be found inside vehicles that teams have been unable to reach.
The ministry of health warned some hospitals in the Valencia region, where at least 202 people have died, are on the “verge of collapse”.
That includes La Fe Hospital, which has received 75,000 calls since the flash floods occurred on Tuesday.
Officials in neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia in the south have also confirmed a combined three deaths in their regions.
Núria Casasus, a teacher in the Valencian town of Benetússer, said the slow warnings meant people did not reach safety in time.
“We couldn’t imagine the magnitude of the flood and the warning was late,” she said. “If the alert had come earlier, people could have made different decisions.”
In Alfafar, Laura Prieto said she only saw helicopters flying overhead for 48 hours as residents pleaded for help.
“We watched the woman who lives on the ground floor opposite with water rising up to her neck,” she said.
“We thought she’d died but she survived with her little pet dog.”
Carlos Mazón, Valencia’s regional president, asked citizens not to take supplies and water into affected areas, saying that they were blocking the roads and hampering access by emergency services.
But thousands of Valencians were streaming into the suburb of La Torre on Friday morning with food, water, yard brushes and other equipment to help with the clean-up operation.
Amparo Fort, the mayor of the small town of Chiva, described how entire homes had been submerged in the flood waters.
“Entire houses have disappeared,” she told local media on Friday. “We don’t know if they are with or without people.”
She added: “We continue to ask for food and water. We need milk, mashed food for babies and the elderly.”
Juan Ramón Adsuara, the mayor of Alfafar, said the aid wasn’t nearly enough for residents trapped in an “extreme situation”.
“There are people living with corpses at home. It’s very sad. We are organising ourselves but we are running out of everything,” he said late on Thursday. “We are totally forgotten.”
The rescue efforts were further complicated as looting broke out, with police making 138 arrests and security personnel being diverted from searching for survivors to patrolling streets.
In the Valencia region town of Aldaia, Fernando Lozano said he saw thieves grabbing items from an abandoned supermarket as “people are a bit desperate”.
“Until things return to normal and the supermarket opens, it’s going to be very bad here.”
One Alfafar resident told state television channel TVE that food was running out.
“This is a disaster. There are a lot of elderly people who don’t have medicine. There are children who don’t have food. We don’t have milk, we don’t have water. We have no access to anything.
“No one even came to warn us on the first day.”
Margarita Robles, the minister for defence, pledged to send the entire 120,000-strong army “if necessary”.
“We must open roads and provide means for supplies,” she told reporters.
On Tuesday, a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours in parts of Valencia.
The scale and speed of the flash floods is said to be a result of Spain’s almost two-year drought that made the ground so hard it could not absorb the rain.