Desperate hunt for survivors in flooded Spain as death toll hits 158 and devastated towns now plagued by LOOTING
FLOODED Spain is now fighting looters after apocalyptic floods soaked the country with officials fearing hundreds of bodies could be found.
Cops have arrested 39 who were allegedly trying to take advantage of the horrendous conditions with shops closed and mud everywhere.
Photos show locals carrying supplies out of supermarkets and stores as they face trying to repair their lives.
So far officials have confirmed 158 dead - with 155 people killed in Valencia alone.
Locals and authorities are beginning the cleanup after Tuesday's rain turned streets into rivers and now face days of finding bodies in thick mud.
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One bridge was swept away by a catastrophic wall of water, while footage has also emerged of a lorry being toppled over.
Hundreds more bodies expected to be found as search and rescue teams go door to door.
Four victims were found Thursday morning in a garage while others were discovered inside cars when they were not able to flee the rising water.
Rainstorms that started Tuesday and continued Wednesday caused flooding across southern and eastern Spain, stretching from Malaga to Valencia.
Thick mud has covered homes and streets and residents are battling through rubbish and cars to clean.
Now the cleanup could be stymied as a number of weather warnings threaten to add even more anguish for locals with heavy rain forecast for some areas.
One of the dead was a 71-year-old Brit who died from a heart attack in hospital after he was rescued from the floods, a government leader said.
He was rescued in the outskirts of Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga, and was suffering from hypothermia when he was recovered from his home.
More than 1,000 soldiers have been deployed to help with the search and rescue operation which has already made 2,500 rescues.
The Dorset woman says she is "lucky to be alive" after being hit by the heavy rain while driving south from their home in Alicante.
Motorway traffic they were travelling on came to a standstill before they realised the bridge ahead of them had been washed away.
Within 10 minutes water started lapping at the car and people were smashing their windows to escape.
She said cars began to float down the road that had turned into a river.
Karen said: "Just after we got out of the car, another car floated on top of our car.
"It was raging, cars were floating about, people were screaming."
The pair managed to climb out of the car's window with the water at chest height before they were picked up by a lorry.
She said: "It was just like a disaster movie. You know when you think 'I could die here'. It was so utterly scary."
The region of Valencia has been hit the hardest - with 92 of the 95 tragic deaths recorded so far in the region.
The town of Paiporta has seen some of the worst damage from the flooding with 40 people having died there so far.
Six of those who were killed were in a care home that flooded, with footage showing a hallways turned into a river as residents tried to escape in wheelchairs.
'Worst day of my life'
Ricardo Gabaldn - mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia - told national broadcaster RTVE that people in his town were "trapped like rats".
He said: "Yesterday was the worst day of my life".
Letur's mayor Sergio Marin told Spanish TV: “We couldn’t have predicted anything like this was going to happen. It’s a major catastrophe."
Mayor of Horno de Alcedo, a town just outside Valencia, told the BBC that the entire town was "flooded in minutes".
She said they had been "cut off"; and left "isolated" after the floods.
Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped his bakery in Utiel when crushing water that rose 2.5m high threatened to overwhelm him.
He said: "I had to get out of a window as best I could because the water was already coming up to my shoulders.
"I took refuge on the first floor with the neighbours and I stayed there all night."
One woman was filmed clinging to her dog in the floodwaters as she tried to stay afloat.
Thankfully, rescuers managed to winch her out just before she succumbed to the water.
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However, for others, help was too late.
"There are bodies and bodies continuing to appear in places we hadn’t been able to access before," The President of the Valencia region Carlos Mazon said.
Why was Spain hit by flooding?
Spain was hit by flash floods after the east of the country was hit by a meteorological phenomena known as a 'DANA'.
A DANA, or a 'cold drop' is technically a system where there is an isolated depression in the atmosphere is at high levels.
In layman's terms, more warm and moist Mediterranean air than usual was sucked high into the atmosphere after a cold system hit the country from the south.
The easterly wind then pushed all those clouds and rain into eastern Spain.
Three to four months of rain fell in some places over the space of 24 hours.
The DANA system hit southern Spain as it arrived from Morocco yesterday and is now expected to head west over southern Portugal.