Spain’s deadly floods prompt government to send 10,000 soldiers, police to Valencia as death toll climbs to over 200

Spain is sending 5,000 more soldiers and 5,000 more police to the eastern region of Valencia after deadly floods this week that killed more than 200 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Saturday.

So far, 205 bodies have been recovered — 202 in Valencia, two in neighboring Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia, in the south — in Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.

Rescuers were still searching for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings on Saturday, four days after the monstrous flash floods that swept away everything in their path in the east of Spain. An unknown number of people remain missing.

Thousands of volunteers are helping to clean up the thick mud that is covering everything in streets, houses and businesses in the hardest-hit towns.

At present, there are some 2,000 soldiers involved in the emergency work, as well as almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes — who have carried out 4,500 rescues during the floods — and 1,800 national police officers.

Spain has suffered through an almost two-year drought, making the flooding worse because the dry ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain. In August 1996, a flood swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people.

Before-and-after satellite images of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the catastrophe, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape inundated with muddy waters. The V-33 highway was completely covered in the brown of a thick layer of mud.

“The situation is unbelievable. It’s a disaster and there is very little help,” said Emilio Cuartero, a resident of Masanasa, on the outskirts of Valencia. “We need machinery, cranes, so that the sites can be accessed. We need a lot of help, and bread and water.”