Spain floods latest: Valencia emergency teams frantically search for missing survivors as death toll is expected to rise and new storm warnings are issued

Emergency rescuers are going house to house in Spain’s worst-hit flooding region today amid fears the death toll from extreme flooding will rise further today.

Officials including the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez say they believe there are bodies still trapped in cars that were caught up in the floods late Tuesday and on Wednesday.

If you’re just joining us this afternoon, here’s what you need to know:

• King Felipe VI said the country’s flood emergency was ‘not over’ as he attended a reception in Madrid where he held a minute’s silence for those killed.
• Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned residents to stay at home today as he raised the official crisis level, warning, ‘this phenomenon has not finished’
• More bodies have been discovered today as emergency rescuers search for victims and survivors with an unknown number missing across eastern Spain
• Looting has been reported at two shopping centres in Valencia with police reported to have made 39 arrests.
• At least 95 people have been killed after Spain recorded its deadliest natural disaster in a generation
• The Valencia region was hit hardest with 92 people killed between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning
• Another two casualties were reported in the neighbouring Castilla La Mancha region while Southern Andalusia reported one death, a 71-year-old British man, as streets were covered in a layer of mud
• Thousands of people were left without water and electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were wrecked or roads were blocked
• The regional government is being criticised for not sending out flood warnings to people’s mobile phones until 8.00pm on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some parts
• 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

Damage in a Valencian suburb at the epicentre of Spain’s worst flooding in modern history has resulted in all businesses closing, it has been reported.

Journalists from Agence France-Presse, the Paris-based news agency, have visited Paiporta, a district in the Horta Sud province.

Reporters spoke to musician David Romero who lamented a ‘catastrophe’.

‘Neighbourhood after neighbourhood, street after street, there is not a business standing,’ he told AFP.

Abandoned vehicles lay piled on top of each other like dominoes and some residents grabbed planks of wood to plough through layers of thick, sticky mud, according to AFP journalists

While hundreds of people are being sheltered in temporary accommodation while road and rail transport are severely disrupted.

Around 30,000 households in Valencia are still without access to internet and landline telephone following a disruption in telecommunications services.

According to Spanish media reports, 120,000 homes have had services restored but broken cables and lack of electrical supplies are affecting some towns and villages across eastern Spain.

Spain’s national police has shared footage of an off-duty police officer rescuing two of his neighbours in Valencia.

The officer, named Daniel, was captured helping to keep a woman afloat as she was being dragged by the current in Benetússer.

Moments before, he apparently pulled another resident with a makeshift rope.

Real Madrid’s away match at Valencia in La Liga this weekend was postponed on Thursday by the Spanish football federation due to the deadly flooding in the region.

Villarreal’s home match against Rayo Vallecano was also suspended after at least 95 people died following flash flooding in eastern Spain.

‘It has been agreed to postpone matches that were to be played in professional and non-professional competitions, both in 11-a-side football and in indoor football (in the Valencia region),’ the federaton said in a statement.

Officials had already postponed several midweek Copa del Rey first round matches including Valencia’s game against Parla Escuela.

A moment of silence for the flood victims will be held at matches this weekend in Spain, including league leaders Barcelona’s Catalan derby against Espanyol on Sunday.

Satellite images show the scale of the flooding in Spain in the worst disaster of its kind to hit the country in decades.

The European Space Agency has shared images taken from Landsat-8, which records images of the Earth’s surface as viewed from orbit.

One image is taken from October 8 and the other taken on Wednesday to illustrate the difference.

According to Spain’s national weather agency, Aemet, on 29 October 2024, Valencia received a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours.

MailOnline has compiled some of the most dramatic moments from the Spain floods as torrential rain left towns and villages devastated.

At least 95 people have died but the toll will rise further today with authorities already discovering bodies.

Spain’s transport minister Oscar Puente has warned high-speed rail services between Madrid and Valencia could be closed for up to three weeks as a result of the floods.

He said more than a kilometre of track would have to be repaired after extensive damage this week.

The Chiva tunnel and the 300 metres closest to each side have their foundations completely destroyed. We will have to replace 1.2 km of track. This is the biggest challenge in restoring the service. The deadlines will vary, with the utmost caution when establishing them, between two and three weeks.

Residents in Valencia, the worst-hit region of the Spain floods, are starting the clean up operation after their neighbourhoods were devastated by a mud deluge.

Neighbours were seen helping one another move furniture outside their homes in the La Torre district as rescuers continue to search for survivors and victims.

According to reports in Spain, the mayor of Valencia has today confirmed nine people have been found dead inside a garage in the La Torre district of Valencia.

María José Catalá reported one of the victims is a local police officer.

This is the moment a mother and her one-year-old baby were winched to safety on a helicopter as flooding threatened their isolated home near Valencia.

Firefighters in Alicante rescued the woman near Riola in Ribera Baixa province on Wednesday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has raised the official crisis level and urged people to stay at home after warning the country, ‘this phenomenon has not finished’.

Speaking in Valencia after visiting the worst-hit region this morning, Mr Sanchez said:

We will not abandon the people of Valencia. We will be here with you all the time necessary and deploying all resources necessary. Our priority, obviously, right now is to find victims, to find missing persons.

Also, so that friends or family can really address the anxiety that families, victims and missing persons are going through.

The most important thing is that I know Spanish people are aware that this phenomenon has not finished. The Spanish weather agency has still raised alerts in Valencia and elsewhere around Spain. And so I urge everybody else to heed those recommendations and to heed the advice of, the law enforcement and protection authorities.

All of those who have been affected, please stay at home.

Mr Sanchez added he believed there were still many bodies trapped in cars hit by the floods.

Spanish newspaper El Pais has reported at least 39 people have been arrested for acts of looting in shopping centres in the flood-hit Valencia region.

The National Police are reported to have made the arrests earlier today and more are expected when the Civil Guard intervenes.

Robberies are said to have been concentrated in the Bonaire Shopping Centre, in Aldaia and MN4 in Alfafar which were both affected by flooding.

Items understood to have targeted included computers, mobile phones and perfumes.

Residents of Valencia have recalled tales of how they survived Tuesday’s apocalyptic floods which left at least 95 people dead – and dozens are still missing.

Valencia, in eastern Spain, has been hit by deadly storms which saw over a year’s worth of rainfall in just eight hours. The tragedy is the worst natural disaster in the country for decades.

Yesterday, residents of the town Utiel ventured out onto the streets to deal with the aftermath of the devastating flash floods which ripped through their homes on Tuesday washing away cars, damaging houses and leaving debris scattered across the area.

Watch the footage below and read Ed Holt’s full report here:

King Felipe VI said Spain’s flood emergency was ‘not over’ as rescuers race to find survivors in the disaster that has killed 95 people.

Addressing a reception in Madrid, where he held a minute’s silence for the flood victims, Felipe expressed condolences to the victims and their families for the ‘catastrophic’ event, which ‘as we have heard in the media is still not over’.

Flood victims have told how their lives and neighbourhoods were completely devastated after torrential rain sparked one of the worst natural flooding disasters in Spain’s history.

Let’s take a look at some of the accounts of people who survived the terrifying ordeal:

Denis Hlavaty, a petrol station worker in Valencia, who spent the night on the roof before he was rescued, said:

It’s a river that came through. The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 metres (6.5-feet) deep.

Antonio Carmona, a construction worker in Andalusia, said:

(The floods) took lots of dogs, took lots horses, they took away everything

Christian Viena, a bar owner in the Valencian village of Barrio de la Torre, said:

The neighbourhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up

Eliú Sánchez, who lives in Sedavi, Valencia, told the BBC he saw a young man being swept away by floods.

He was on top of a car, it looked like he tried to jump into another car but he was carried away. I have been told people were clinging to trees, but the force made them let go and they were carried away, calling for help

Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped his bakery in Utiel after water rose to above two metres inside his premises. He told Sky News:

I had to get out of a window as best I could because the water was already coming up to my shoulders. I took refuge on the first floor with the neighbours and I stayed there all night. It has taken everything. I have to throw everything out of the bakery, the freezers, ovens, everything.

Maria Carmen Martinez, another Utiel resident, watched on as a man was winched to safety in a harrowing rescue. She said:

It was horrible, horrible. There was a man there clinging to a fence who was falling and calling people for help. They couldn’t help him until the helicopters came and took him away.

Scientists have linked extreme flooding to climate change which is also driving increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain as well as a warmer Mediterranean Sea.

As scientists already know, climate change results in more intense rainfall because warmer air can hold more moisture.

And because rainfall is increasing on average across the world, the chances of flooding are getting higher.

Climate warming also increases evaporation on land, which can worsen drought and create conditions more prone to wildfire and a longer wildfire season.

Earth’s warmer and moister atmosphere and warmer oceans are linked with stronger and more intense hurricanes.

In addition, rising sea levels – partly caused by melting ice in the poles – increases the amount of seawater that is pushed on to shore during coastal storms, which, along with more rainfall produced by the storms, can result in more destructive storm surges and flooding.

A British woman 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 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.

Read Olivia Christie’s report here:

These pictures show police officers consoling one another in Valencia amid reports two Civil Guard colleagues are feared to be among the 95 fatalities we know so far.

The officers are understood to have been trapped in a flooded basement in their police station in Paiporta near the city of Valencia.

Spain’s Defence Minister has insisted today’s search for survivors and victims of the devastating floods will be ‘meticulous’ as she admitted the number of people missing is ‘the big unknown at the moment.’

Margarita Robles also confessed when asked if she believed the provisional death toll would stay around the current number and not suffer a dramatic increase: ‘I’m not optimistic’.

She went public with her fears about a large rise in the number of fatalities as rescue workers using sniffer dogs on the ground and helicopters and drones in the air prepared for ‘the second phase of search and rescue’ in the worst-affected areas.

Speaking last night, Ms Robles said:

Tomorrow, taking advantage of a more favourable weather forecast, we have to try to begin what we call the second phase, which is the phase of search and rescue.

Some people are trapped, but there are many others who we don’t know whether they’re missing or not. This is the big question at the moment, how many missing people are there?

Fifty-one cynological teams with sniffer dogs are going to be on the ground and that search and operation effort is going to be meticulous in case they come across people who are alive.

Asked on a Spanish radio station whether the death toll could be significantly higher than the current confirmed ‘provisional’ death toll of 95, she added:

Unfortunately I’m not optimistic about things.

Vehicles have been left piled up on a motorway in Valencia after devastating floods swept the region.

Some cars were left overturned after being swept up in a muddy deluge.

Apocalyptic scenes have been witnessed across eastern Spain this week after deadly flash floods caused by torrential rain.

Cars have been submerged by muddy waters, rivers have burst their banks and buildings and bridges swept away during the national disaster, thought to be the worst of its kind in decades.

This video shows a glimpse of the devastation as the rescue effort continues today.

by Elena Salvoni and Olivia Christie

A British mother-of-two living in Valencia said local authorities acted too late as deadly floods swept through the region killing more than 95.

Entire towns have been plunged under water, cars swept away and people stranded in their homes in near apocalyptic scenes.

A 71-year-old British man who was suffering from hypothermia was this afternoon identified as one of the dead.

The Foreign Office has issued an urgent warning for people planning to travel to Spain from Britain.

The notice reads: ‘Severe weather and flooding is affecting many areas of southern and western Spain, particularly the Valencia region and Castilla La Mancha. Journeys may be affected.’

Travellers have also been urged to check the latest weather warnings from the Spanish meteorological office.

According to Spain’s state weather agency Aemet, a red alert remains active in the Campina Gaditana region of southern Spain for heavy rain.

A yellow warning is in place for northeastern and southwestern Spain.

Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives.

The death toll could rise further today as search efforts continue with an unknown number of people still missing.

If you’re just joining us this morning, here’s what you need to know:

• At least 95 people have been killed after Spain recorded its deadliest natural disaster in a generation
• The Valencia region was hit hardest with 92 people killed between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning
• Another two casualties were reported in the neighbouring Castilla La Mancha region while Southern Andalusia reported one death, a 71-year-old British man, as streets were covered in a layer of mud
• More than a thousand soldiers from Spain’s emergency rescue units have joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is heading to the region to witness the destruction first hand as the nation starts a three-day period of official mourning
• Thousands of people were left without water and electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were wrecked or roads were blocked
• The regional government is being criticised for not sending out flood warnings to people’s mobile phones until 8.00pm on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some parts
• 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

Shocking drone footage released by Spain’s National Police has laid bare the scale of destruction wrought by brutal flash floods that overran Valencia earlier this week and left at least 95 dead.

Bewildered residents who survived the surge were seen picking their way through the wreckage and debris littering mud-covered streets as the remains of cars, bikes and other vehicles lay smashed up against walls and bridges.

Spain’s Defence Minister, Margarita Robles, admitted the number of missing in the horror floods known already to have claimed 95 lives is ‘the big unknown at the moment’ and confessed: ‘I’m not optimistic’ when asked if she believed the provisional death toll would not rise.

In their first official statement, the Civil Guard in Valencia -who have been credited with saving countless lives – said yesterday evening 1,200 people remained trapped between the A-3 motorway which ends in Valencia and the A-7 motorway which passes close to it.

The police force said in a statement released just before 7pm local time: ‘At the moment it’s estimated around 5,000 vehicles are still stuck and around 1,200 people are still trapped between the A-3 and A-7 in different places.

‘Our main operational efforts are focusing on helping and rescuing people and preventing looting.

‘We’re also co-operating in the identification of bodies and helping to keep communication channels clear.’

The Civil Guard added: ‘Our officers have carried out around 2,500 rescues so far.’

Hello and welcome to MailOnline’s live coverage of the Spanish floods as a rescue operation gets under way to find survivors and victims following the deadliest flooding in a generation.

At least 95 people have been killed in the Valencia region where more than a year’s worth of rain fell in just eight hours to leave towns and cities overwhelmed by a muddy deluge.

Stick with us as we bring you the latest updates from Valencia.