“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told national broadcaster RTVE on Wednesday. He said six residents died and others were missing.

“We were trapped like rats. Cars and trash cans were driving around the streets. The water was rising up to 3 meters (9.8 feet),” he said.

The Spanish government declared three days of mourning starting Thursday.

“For those looking for their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised speech.

Rescue personnel and more than 1,100 soldiers from Spanish emergency response units have been deployed to the affected areas. Spain’s central government has set up a crisis committee to coordinate rescue efforts.

Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped from his bakery in Utiel when crashing water threatened to overwhelm him. He said the height was more than 8 feet inside his business and he feared his livelihood had been destroyed.

“I had to get out through a window as best I could because the water was already up to my shoulders. I took refuge on the first floor with the neighbors and stayed there all night,” Berenguer told the Associated Press. “It took everything. I have to throw out everything from the bakery, the freezers, the ovens, everything.

María Carmen Martínez, another Utiel resident, witnessed a harrowing rescue.

“It was horrible, horrible. There was a man hanging on a fence that was falling and calling people for help,” she said. “They couldn’t help him until the helicopters came and took him away.”

A town in Valencia, Paiporta, suffered exceptional losses. Mayor Maribel Albalat told RTVE that more than 30 people died in this town of some 25,000 inhabitants. Among them were six residents of a residence for the elderly. Media broadcast images of elderly people in chairs and wheelchairs at a Paiporta retirement home, some screaming in apparent terror as the water rose to their knees.

“We don’t know what happened, but within 10 minutes the village was overflowing with water,” Albalat said.

Spain’s national weather service said it had rained more in eight hours in Valencia than in the previous 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”

Located south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, Valencia is a tourist destination known for its beaches and citrus groves, and for being the origin of paella, a rice dish. The region has gorges and small river beds that spend much of the year completely dry but quickly fill with water when it rains. Many of them pass through populated areas.

As the floods receded, thick layers of mud mixed with trash made some streets unrecognizable.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally destroyed,” Christian Viena, owner of a bar in the Valencian village of Barrio de la Torre, said by telephone. “Everything is in ruins, everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is nearly 30 centimeters (11 inches) deep.

Outside Viena’s bar, people ventured outside to see what they could salvage. Cars were piled up and the streets were filled with clumps of waterlogged branches.

Spain has experienced similar autumn storms in recent years. Nothing, however, compared to the devastation of the last two days, reminiscent of the floods in Germany and Belgium in 2021, in which 230 people were killed.

The death toll is likely to rise as other regions have yet to report casualties and search efforts continue in hard-to-reach locations.

“We are facing a very difficult situation,” said the Minister of Territorial Policies, Ángel Víctor Torres. “The fact that we cannot give the number of missing people shows the scale of the tragedy.”

Spain is still recovering from a severe drought and has recorded record temperatures in recent years. Scientists say the increase in extreme weather events is likely linked to climate change. Prolonged drought makes it more difficult for land to absorb large quantities of water.

The storms also unleashed a rare tornado and hailstorm that punched holes in car windows and greenhouses.

Transport has also been affected. A high-speed train with almost 300 people on board derailed near Malaga, although rail authorities said no one was injured. High-speed train service between the city of Valencia and Madrid has been disrupted and the Transport Ministry said it could take up to four days to restore high-speed service to the capital due to damage to the line . Bus and commuter train lines have also been interrupted. Many flights were canceled Tuesday evening, stranding some 1,500 people overnight at Valencia airport. Flights resumed on Wednesday.

Football matches involving Valencia and Levante were canceled and players from Barcelona and Madrid observed a minute’s silence for flood victims before training on Wednesday.

Valencia regional president Carlos Mazón urged people to stay at home, saying travel by road was difficult due to fallen trees and crashed vehicles. Rescue efforts were hampered by downed power lines and power outages, and regional emergency services responded to some 30,000 calls, Mazón said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels that the EU would “help coordinate rescue teams” using its Copernicus satellite geomonitoring system.

Some residents asked for news of their missing loved ones via social media, television and radio.

Leonardo Enrique told RTVE that his family searched for hours for his 40-year-old son, Leonardo Enrique Rivera, who was driving a delivery van when the rain started. His son sent a message saying his van was flooded and he had been hit by another vehicle near Ribarroja, an industrial town among the worst hit, Enrique said.