'We had no warning' Grief and anger in town ripped apart by raging flood water

Public buildings across Spain lowered flags to half-mast to mark the first of three days of national mourning. Leticia Cardona Teruel set off with her husband and eight-year-old daughter—their rucksacks packed to the brim—to walk the seven kilometers to Valencia.

- Ashifa Kassam

About 36 hours earlier, on Tuesday, they had watched as rivers of mud-colored water coursed through their small town of Paiporta, swamping the ground floors of buildings, sweeping away cars and submerging local plazas.

Yesterday, as access roads remained mostly cut off, they were among a dozen or so residents who were walking to the regional capital in the hope of staying safe.

The journey gave them a firsthand look at the devastation wreaked by the storm: streets littered with piles of cars, and street lights that lay scattered on the ground. "Everything is destroyed," said Cardona Teruel, speaking to the Guardian by phone. "It's like a zombie apocalypse that you see in the movies."

This week the quiet commuter town of Paiporta became known across Spain as one of the places worst-affected by the country's deadliest flood in modern history. Of at least 150 deaths reported in the region of Valencia, at least 62 occurred in the town, leaving many reeling with grief and anger that there had been no official alert before water began surging through their town.

"There was no warning," said the town's mayor, Maribel Albalat. In the absence of any sign that this storm would be different from any other, many residents had gone down to garages beneath their apartments to move their cars to higher ground.

"We're told that that's where a lot of people were caught," said Albalat. Later, explaining that the flood waters had surged just as many residents were at ground level or underground, she was more blunt. "It was a trap," she told the broadcaster TVE.