Photos Show Devastation of Beloved Spanish Tourist City After Record Floods

Videos across social media show the devastation wrought by record flooding which hit Valencia, Spain on Oct. 29. Per the BBC, at least 95 people have lost their lives due to the extreme weather event. Reuters reported that it was the country’s deadliest flood in over 30 years, while meteorologists explained that a year’s worth of rain fell on Valencia within eight hours on Tuesday.

"It's a river that came through," Denis Hlavaty told the outlet. He waited to be rescued from the deluge while sitting on a high ledge inside of a gas station. "The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep."

The flooding led to citywide devastation, piling cars in the street on its way to felling bridges and buildings. Much of the farmland in Valencia, where roughly two-thirds of Spain’s citrus fruit is grown, was destroyed in the flood. One unbelievable video shows a tidal wave rushing between homes in a residential community. Another taken on a busy highway shows water rushing through traffic, submerging cars and sending terrified passengers onto their hoods.

More than 1,000 soldiers from the country’s emergency response team were sent to the regions within Valencia to rescue stranded citizens. They shared a video showing the rescue of people in flooded streets and stranded on rooftops.

In one particularly harrowing clip, residents of a nursing home—many of them in wheelchairs—can be seen sitting in the flooded rec room in waist-high water waiting to be evacuated.

On Wednesday morning, regional authorities confirmed that 73 people had died. By the afternoon, that number had risen to 95. It is Spain’s deadliest flood since a 1996 disaster in the Pyrenees when at least 80 people lost their lives after a campground was flooded.