PAIPORTA, Spain — The damaged car that killed Jorge Tarazona’s 3-year-old niece and sister-in-law in last week’s catastrophic flooding in Spain now hangs halfway down the ragged edge of the road.

His brother managed to survive by clinging to a fence. He and his family were caught in traffic driving to Paiporta, on the southern outskirts of Valencia, Tarazona said. They had no chance of escape as the tsunami-like wave quickly overflowed the nearby drainage channel and swept away everything in its path.

“They didn’t have time to do anything,” Tarazona told The Associated Press a week after the Oct. 29 floods. “My brother was dragged and ended up clinging to a fence.” His sister-in-law “could not get out and died with her little girl.”

Tarazona had cycled back to the scene and taped a note on the car asking whoever eventually pulled the wreckage from the side of the highway to call him.

“It all happened so fast,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “Within half an hour, the current had taken the car. There was no time, no time. She was able to send me the location of their car in hopes of a rescue.

“The next day she was found dead inside,” he said.

It is unclear whether the two are included in the official death toll of 217 confirmed as the death toll rises, eight days after Spain’s deadliest floods this century.

Paiporta has been labeled by Spanish media as ground zero of the natural disaster that has also left 89 people missing, while officials say the real figure could be higher.

More than 60 people died in Paiporta when a wave of water rushed into the Poyo canal that runs through its center. Frustration at survivors’ sense of abandonment erupted in Paiporta on Sunday, when a crowd greeted Spain’s royals and officials with a barrage of mud and other objects.