A walk through Valencia's catastrophe zone

Besides the news footage and videos circulating online, the empty shelves and people panic buying water in the supermarkets, you wouldn’t know that Spain’s worst flooding in decades had washed through towns and neighbourhoods just a few miles from Valencia. It barely rained in the city.

But on Monday evening, in the affected areas an entire year’s worth fell in a few hours, swelling rivers and sending torrents ripping through towns as people returned from work. Many were swept away or trapped in their cars. In nearby Paiporta, 62 people were killed. The mayor of Chiva has warned locals to brace for “hundreds” of deaths in the town.

Thousands of residents are still without power or phone coverage. Motorways and train lines are impassable, and hundreds of people have disappeared. Spanish social media is full of appeals for missing persons, locals pleading for information about family members they haven’t heard from since the storm.

Heading south to La Torre, the bus only goes so far before the roads are blocked. It’s an abnormally hot day for late October, and as I set off on foot there are huge puddles of stagnant brown water on either side of the roadway. I pass a construction site. The hole in the ground is filled like a swimming pool. As I get closer to the worst affected area, there are long lines outside a supermarket, people with plastic bags over their shoes, mud-caked boots and buckets, sitting on the street. There are helicopters circling, sirens shrieking. A sign outside a bar offers food and water for anyone who needs it.

Trying to cross a bridge, a police patrol turns me away as fire engines and ambulances file past. Up ahead, another bridge. Hundreds of figures trudge across, tiny in the distance, like stick men. They come closer. Broken-looking people, they walk quietly, carrying walking sticks, suitcases, plastic bags, and shopping trolleys. Volunteers head in the opposite direction with shovels and supplies of food and water.

The river Turia is an angry, dark brown colour. It used to run through the city centre but in 1957 burst its banks and killed 81 people. The authorities decided to reroute it, sending relief drains curving around the south of the city.

La Torre comes into view. There are cars and trucks abandoned on the road. A girl is talking on her phone. “La Torre is totally destroyed,” she tells whoever is on the other end. A man says he heard rumours eight people drowned here in a carpark.

The streets, the buildings, everything, is soaked in a thick sludge and debris. A tractor trundles along. Piles of belongings – mattresses, chairs, a child’s bed — are stacked up on the pavements. There are concrete slabs and cars strewn around the streets. The air is thick with humming water pumps and locals brushing water from their buildings.

A dark mark halfway up the ground floor of an apartment block shows how high the water rose. Trees are uprooted. There’s barking and meowing as people leave with their pets. Police and emergency services are grouped together at the end of one street – that’s where the car park is.

Shop shutters are ripped up and mangled. Some areas are filled with knee-high mud and are impassable. The cars are stacked on top of one another like toys. An old woman sits on a plastic chair, weeping quietly to herself. One local, María, says she knew it was getting serious “when I saw the water start to rise”. She shakes her head. “The water rose when the storm drain broke. I look out the window… we didn’t have time.”

On Monday evening, Valencia’s regional government sent a civil protection alert to everyone in the area, accompanied by an emergency alert to everyone’s phone. María says they didn’t get the alert until after 8pm, long after the flooding began. Spain’s meteorological agency had issued a red level extreme weather alert that morning. “It was a failure of those who knew about the red alert,” María says. “You know about it before this, don’t send me an alert that…” her voice trails off.

Back in the centre of Valencia, it’s as though nothing happened. People look me up and down, see my sodden shoes and trousers and then they understand where I’ve been. They look away. I read that the official death toll has risen to 155. It’s confirmed that nine bodies were discovered in the car park in La Torre. Nine people who started their day like any other, but drowned, trapped underground.