“When the water started to rise, it came like a wave. “It was like a tsunami.”
These are the words of Guillermo Serrano Pérez, 21 years old, resident of the town of Paiporta, near Valencia.
Guillermo is one of the thousands of people who suffered the devastating effects of DANA (Isolated Depression at High Levels), the storm that between Tuesday and Wednesday caused massive flooding in several regions of the east and southeast of Spain, leaving at least 95 dead and dozens missing.
This young man was driving on the highway with his parents on Tuesday night when they were surprised by a waterspout.
To survive, they abandoned the vehicle and climbed a bridge.
From alert to panic
The strength of the water currents surprised many, including Guillermo’s family, even though intense rainfall had been hitting the area for hours and warnings had been issued.
On Tuesday morning, around 07:00 Spanish time (06:00 GMT), the Spanish meteorological agency Aemet warned that torrential rain was forecast for the Valencia region.
“A lot of caution! The danger is extreme! Do not circulate unless it is absolutely necessary,” the agency said in a statement on the social network X, shortly before issuing a “maximum red alert“.
More alerts were issued throughout the day and local authorities were asked to prevent people from approaching the banks of the river.
At 3:20 p.m., the regional emergency coordination center was already publishing images of completely flooded streets in the municipalities of La Fuente and Utiel, west of Valencia.
A few hours later, he indicated that several rivers in the area were swollen and asked people to move away from the banks.
But in most places it was too late.
Chiva, about 20 kilometers away, was one of the first towns hit by the fury of the flash floods.
The deep ravine that runs through the town was filling with water since Tuesday afternoon after heavy rains.
At 6:00 p.m. the streets had become rivers, with the force of the water dragging cars, street lamps and benches.
Emergency services rushed to provide help throughout the region, but the water invaded the streets with unprecedented speed.
“Suddenly a very strong downpour fell from above… and the water rose a meter or meter and a half in a few minutes,” explained the mayor of the town of Riba-roja de Túria.
In other parts of the region they began to spread missing persons news after being dragged by the waters.
However, Civil Protection did not send a notice to residents of the Valencia region to discourage them from traveling on the roads until more than two hours later, after 8:00 p.m.
Many have questioned the timing of this warning, more than 12 hours after the Spanish meteorological agency issued its first red alert.
Some criticized that the warning came too late for people to seek shelter on upper floors or leave the roads, which were full of travelers returning home after work.
“The water tore off my clothes”
Paco was driving from Valencia to nearby Picassent when he was surprised by flash floods that swallowed the roads.
He told the newspaper El Mundo that “the speed of the water was crazy” while the current carried away the vehicles in its path: “The pressure was tremendous. I managed to get out of the car and the water pushed me against a fence to which I held on, but I couldn’t move.”
“He wouldn’t let me. He ripped off my clothes”, remember.
Patricia Rodríguez, from the town of Sedaví, was also surprised by the flooding while driving home from work.
According to what he told local media, the water began to rise when he was in a traffic jam near Paiporta and the cars began to float.
“We were afraid that the river would overflow because we were in the most dangerous area,” he explains.
She managed to escape on foot with the help of another driver and watched, terrified, as a young man nearby carried a newborn baby to safety.
“It’s a good thing no one slipped because, otherwise, the current would have carried us”he explains.
Seven hours clinging to a palm tree
Posts on social media help to understand the chaos that gripped the region as night fell.
A video shared on X shows elderly in wheelchairs from a nursing home in Paiporta trapped in a dining room with brown water up to their knees.
On the same social network, Rut Moyano, a neighbor of Benetússer, near Valencia, recounted the increasingly desperate situation in her town: she said that she was taking refuge with neighbors on the upper floors of her building when one of them suffered a heart attack and died.
“The civil guard has arrived on foot but they cannot access the property because there is a car stuck in the gate. Does anyone know how to tell me if help is on the way?” he posted.
On Wednesday morning daylight revealed the full extent of the devastation, with hundreds of cars piled on top of each other, businesses destroyed and entire towns covered in mud and debris.
In Valencia, a man named Juliano Sánchez was rescued with symptoms of hypothermia after clinging to palm trees for seven hours.
“I didn’t want to die,” he told El Periódico. “I held on to some palm trees with all my strength so that the river would not drag me away.”
But many were less lucky.
Dozens of people remain missing across the region, while those who survived have described their helplessness in the face of the terrible destruction.
“We saw two cars dragged by the current and we don’t know if there were people inside,” a man explained to Las Provincias. “We have never seen anything like this”.
“It has been devastating”: the testimony of a Colombian woman who suffered the storm with her family
“I left my car on the avenue yesterday afternoon and I don’t know where it is.”
This is the testimony given to BBC Mundo by Colombian Victoria López, who lives in the La Torre neighborhood, in the capital Valencia, with her husband and 9-year-old daughter.
On Tuesday afternoon, Victoria, who teaches school support classes to children, had no idea what was to come in her neighborhood.
“Yesterday was a nice afternoon because we did a Halloween activity with the children, I prepared Halloween things and it was a very pleasant afternoon. Then, at 7, the parents came to pick up the kids, and everything was normal,” he says.
She remembers that there was a lot of wind and a friend warned her about DANA that threatened a large area of the south and east of Spanish territory.
“He asked me where I had the car parked and I told him it was in the middle of the avenue. I went down and everything looked normal; The street was completely dry, not a drop of water. So I thought what we all thought: ‘They are exaggerating, it won’t be that bad’”.
He assures that, from that moment, everything happened very quickly. When he tried to go down to the street again, his portal was flooded of water at a height level of one and a half meters.
“Then we saw the cars floating. It’s not that they were moving because of the water; the thing is They were completely floating. It was something incredible to see, we couldn’t believe it,” he says.
Victoria lives on the fifth floor, so her apartment was safe. His main concern was the family car.
“We saw a neighbor swimming in the water in the middle of the street and I told my husband: ‘Look at the cars, ours is gone’, and until now we don’t know where our car is,” he says.
“We are still in water up to our knees; “My husband has gone with a friend to look for the car and they are almost a kilometer away, but nothing, we still don’t know where it is,” she laments.
He explains that he helped some neighbors in the neighborhood who had been left homeless.
“I welcomed them home and they spent the night with usbecause, of course, where were they going to go? We are one of the few buildings with energy, internet and drinking water. I feel grateful, although all this is still very strong,” she declares.
And he adds that the most shocking thing he has experienced in the last 24 hours “is realize that you are trapped in your house while this is happening outside, while you see images and videos on the internet.”
“When you go down and see the destroyed cars, the sad people, that’s when you really assimilate that in a second your life changes. “You feel helpless because you know that your friends are in trouble and you can’t go out and help them,” he says.
The city of Valencia, where Victoria’s family lives, was partially affected by the storm, although not as much as other towns in the region such as Torrent, Chiva, Alfafar or Paiporta. In the latter alone there have been at least 34 deaths and a “humanitarian emergency” has been declared.
“I feel lucky. Have a friend who lives in a basement and lost everything: his house, his things, his memories. “It has been devastating,” she says through tears.
click here to read more stories from BBC News World.
Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.
You can also follow us on YouTube, instagram, TikTok, x, Facebook and in our new whatsapp channel.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.