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

“Unfortunately, there are deaths inside some vehicles,” Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said on Thursday, before the death toll rose to 95 on Wednesday evening.

Rushing waters turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that destroyed homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and anything in their path. Floods destroyed bridges and made roads unrecognizable.

Luís Sánchez, a welder, said he saved several people stuck in their cars on the flooded V-31 highway, south of the city of Valencia. The road quickly became a floating graveyard littered with hundreds of vehicles.

“I saw bodies floating. I called, but nothing,” Sánchez said. “The firefighters took the elderly people first, when they could get in. I come from the surrounding area, so I tried to help and rescue people. People were crying everywhere, they were stuck.

Regional authorities said Wednesday evening that helicopter rescuers had rescued some 70 people stranded on rooftops and in cars, but ground crews were far from finished.

“We are searching house by house,” Ángel Martínez, one of 1,000 soldiers taking part in the rescue operations, told Spanish national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

An Associated Press reporter saw rescuers removing seven body bags from an underground garage in Barrio de la Torre.

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

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood in recent memory. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also causing higher temperatures and droughts in Spain and warming 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 quick but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, including dozens of international scientists who study the role of global warming in extreme weather conditions.

Spain has suffered from a nearly two-year drought, meaning that when the deluge occurred Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the ground was so hard it was unable to absorb the rain, causing flash floods.

This severe 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 in the previous 20 months.

A man cried as he showed a journalist from national broadcaster RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his house in Catarroja, south of Valencia. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside, obliterating furniture and personal belongings and tearing paint off some of the walls.

In Paiporta, Mayor Maribel Albalat said Thursday that at least 62 people had died in the community of 25,000 residents near the city of Valencia.

“(Paiporta) has never had flooding, we never have that kind of problem. And we found a lot of elderly people in the city center,” Albalat told RTVE. “There were also a lot of people coming to take their cars out of their garage… it was a real trap.”

While municipalities near the city of Valencia were hardest hit by the suffering, the storms unleashed their fury across large swaths of the southern and eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Two deaths were confirmed in the neighboring region of Castilla La Mancha and one in southern Andalusia.

Greenhouses and farms in southern Spain, known as the garden of Europe for its exported products, were also destroyed by heavy rains and floods. The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hailstorm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia. Houses were left without water as far as Malaga, in Andalusia, in the southwest.

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

“This storm front is still present,” the Prime Minister said. “Stay at home and follow official advice and you will help save lives.”

As the shock wore off, anger grew at the authorities’ handling of the crisis, both over their late warnings of impending flooding and the chaotic emergency response. .

Many survivors had to walk long distances in sticky mud to find food and water. Most of their cars had been destroyed and the mud, destruction and debris left by the storm made some roads impassable. Some pushed shopping carts through the soggy streets while others carried their children to protect them from the mud.

Some 150,000 Valencia residents were without electricity on Wednesday, but about half had access on Thursday. An unknown number had no running water and relied on whatever bottled water they could find.

The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut and rail lines disrupted, including high-speed service to Madrid. Authorities said it would take two to three weeks to repair this damaged line.

And with emergency personnel focused on recovering the dead, survivors had to find basic supplies and clean up the mess. Volunteers joined residents to move damaged vehicles, remove trash and sweep away mud.

With local services clearly overwhelmed, Valencia regional president Carlos Mazón asked on Thursday if the Spanish army could help distribute essential goods to the population. The government in Madrid responded by promising to send 500 additional soldiers, more national police and civil guards.

But necessity – and the post-apocalyptic atmosphere – drove some into the abandoned stores.

The National Police arrested 39 people on Wednesday for looting. The Civil Guard said it arrested 11 people for thefts from shopping centers, while its officers were also deployed to prevent thefts from cars.

Some people said they had to steal supplies, especially those who did not have running water or a way to access stores that were not destroyed.

“We are not thieves. I work as a school cleaner for the council. But we have to eat. Look what I’m picking up: baby food,” Nieves Vargas said at a local supermarket whose doors were blown over by water and staff were unattended. “What can I give the child if we don’t have electricity.”

Wilson reported from Barcelona, ​​Spain, and Leon from Valencia. Teresa Medrano in Madrid and Seth Borenstein in Washington, DC, contributed.