Survivors of Spain’s worst natural disaster this century woke up Thursday to scenes of devastation after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed the lives of at least 95 people. The death toll is expected to rise as search efforts continue, with authorities removing bodies from vehicles and an unknown number of people still missing.

“Unfortunately, there are deaths inside some vehicles,” Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said, referring to the hundreds of cars and trucks stuck on mud-stained roads.

The consequences of the floods were eerily similar to the damage caused by a violent hurricane or tsunami.

Cars piled on top of each other like broken toys, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items, all mired in a layer of mud covering the streets of Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of Valencia, one Dozens of localities damaged in the hard- hit the Valencia region, where 92 people died between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

Walls of rushing water transformed narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that swept over the ground floors of homes and swept away cars, people and everything in their path.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally destroyed,” said Christian Viena, owner of a bar in Barrio de la Torre.

Regional authorities said late Wednesday that there were no people left stranded on rooftops or in cars needing rescue after helicopters rescued some 70 people. But ground crews and citizens continued to inspect vehicles and homes damaged by the onslaught of water.

More than a thousand soldiers from Spain’s emergency rescue units joined regional and local rescue workers to search for bodies and survivors. The defense minister said soldiers alone recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people as of Wednesday evening.

“We are searching house by house,” Ángel Martínez, head of a military emergency unit, told Spanish national radio RNE on Thursday from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is traveling to the region to see the destruction firsthand as the country begins a three-day period of official mourning.

Thousands of people were left without water or electricity and hundreds were left stranded after their cars were destroyed or roads were blocked. The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut and train lines disrupted, including high-speed service to Madrid, which authorities say will not be repaired for several days.

While Valencia was worst hit by the storm, two other casualties were reported in the neighboring region of Castilla La Mancha. Southern Andalusia reported one death.

While the greatest human and material suffering was inflicted on dozens of municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury across vast stretches of the southern and eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

Houses were left without water as far as Malaga, in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday evening, without any of the approximately 300 passengers being injured.

Greenhouses and fields of farmers across the southern part of Spain, known as the garden of Europe for its exported products, were also destroyed by heavy rains, floods and winds. The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hailstorm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia.

The skies showed some mercy to the worst-hit areas by stopping early Wednesday.

But heavy rains continued further north on Thursday and the Spanish weather agency issued a red alert for several counties in Castellón, the northernmost province of the Valencia region, and an orange alert for southern Tarragona, in northeast of Catalonia, and the west coast of Cádiz. , to the southwest.

The Spanish Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms which can cause flooding.

But it 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.

The severity of the weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain’s national weather service said it had rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than in the previous 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”

Yet the relative calm of the next day also provided time to reflect and wonder whether authorities could have done more to save lives.

The regional government of Valencia is being criticized for only sending flood warnings to citizens’ cell phones at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when flooding had already started in some areas and well after the national meteorological agency had issued a red alert for heavy rain.

Andreu Salom, mayor of the Valencian village of L’Alcudia, told national broadcaster RTVE that his town had lost at least two residents, a girl and her elderly mother who lived together, and that police were still searching for the driver of the missing truck.

“We had no indication that the river was going to overflow its banks, which happened around 6 p.m. when a wall of water and mud filled the city center and swept away everything,” he said. he declared.