BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — At least 64 people have died in eastern Spain after flash floods swept away cars, turned village streets into rivers and disrupted railway lines and highways in the worst natural disaster to hit European nation in recent memory.

Emergency services in the eastern region of Valencia confirmed a death toll of 62 on Wednesday. Two other victims were reported in the neighboring region of Castilla La Mancha.

Tuesday’s storms caused flooding across a wide swath of southern and eastern Spain, stretching from Malaga to Valencia. The mud-colored floods sent vehicles crashing through the streets at high speed, while pieces of wood swirled in the water mixed with household items. Police and rescue services used helicopters to lift people from their homes and rubber boats to reach drivers stuck on the roofs of their cars.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said dozens of cities had been flooded and warned the danger was not over.

“For those who are looking for their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain,” Sánchez said in a televised address. “Our priority is to help you. We are putting all the necessary resources to be able to recover from this tragedy.”

People, some with their belongings, walk through flooded streets in Valencia, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/ALberto Saiz

Authorities reported several people missing on Tuesday night, but the next morning brought the shocking announcement that dozens of people had been found dead.

“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a city in Valencia, told national broadcaster RTVE. He said several people are still missing in his town.

“We were caught like rats. Cars and garbage containers flowed through the streets. The water was rising to 3 meters (9.8 feet),” he said.

More than 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units have been deployed to the devastated areas. Rescue services were also heading east from other parts of Spain. Spain’s central government has set up a crisis committee to help coordinate rescue efforts.

An elderly couple were rescued from the top floor of their home by a military unit using a bulldozer, with three soldiers accompanying them in the giant shovel.

Television reports showed videos shot by panicked residents documenting water flooding the ground floor of apartment buildings, streams bursting their banks and bridges giving way.

Spain’s national weather service called the rainfall “extraordinary”, with 491 liters per square meter (108 gallons per 32.3 square feet) accumulated in eight hours in the town of Chiva in Valencia.

Spain has experimented similar autumn storms in recent years. Nothing, however, compared to the flood-like devastation of the past two days in Germany and Belgium in 2021 in which 230 people were killed.

The death toll is likely to rise with other regions yet to report casualties and search efforts continuing in hard-to-reach areas.

In the village of Letur in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region, Mayor Sergio Marín Sánchez said six people were missing.

Spain is still recovering from a severe drought and continues to record high temperatures in recent years. Scientists say increased episodes of extreme weather are probably related to climate change.

The prolonged drought has also made it difficult for the land to absorb large volumes of water.

The storms unleashed a freak hailstorm that blew holes in car windows and greenhouses, as well as a rarely seen tornado.

Transport was also affected. A high-speed train with nearly 300 people on board derailed near Malaga, although rail authorities said no one was injured. High-speed train service between the city of Valencia and Madrid has been suspended, as have commuter lines.

Valencia regional president Carlos Mazón urged people to stay at home, with road travel already difficult due to fallen trees and destroyed vehicles. Rescue efforts were hampered, Mazón said, by downed power lines that left areas without power, while phone lines were jammed with calls. He said the regional emergency service had attended to about 30,000 calls.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels that the EU would help by using its Copernicus satellite geomonitoring system “to help coordinate rescue teams”.

The European Union leader said the bloc was ready to activate a civil protection mechanism that would provide combined assistance from the other 26 member states should Spain request assistance.

“Europe is ready to help,” Von der Leyen said.

As the waters receded, thick layers of mud mixed with garbage made the streets unrecognizable.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s basically destroyed,” Christian Viena, a bar owner in the Valencian village of Barrio de la Torre, said by phone. “Everything is a complete wreck, everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is almost 30 centimeters (11 inches) deep.”

Outside the bar in Vienna, people were venturing out to see what they could salvage. Cars were piled up and the streets were littered with clumps of waterlogged branches.

Relatives of the missing flooded social media and local television and radio stations with appeals to find their loved ones.

Leonardo Enrique told RTVE that his family had been searching for hours for his son, Leonardo Enrique Rivera, 40, who was driving a delivery van when it started to rain. His son sent a message saying his van was flooded and that he had been hit by another vehicle when he was near Ribarroja, an industrial town that is one of the hardest hit, Enrique said.

Located south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, Valencia is a tourist destination known for its beaches, citrus groves and the home of Spain’s paella rice dish.

Like other areas of Spain, Valencia has gorges and small riverbeds that spend much of the year completely dry, but quickly fill with water when it rains. Many of them pass through populated areas.

Rain eased in Valencia late Wednesday morning as the storm moved north, prompting authorities in the Barcelona region to issue weather alerts.

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Medrano reported from Madrid. Associated Press reporter Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.

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