Watch: Elderly woman and baby airlifted to safety amid Spanish flash flooding
An elderly woman has been airlifted to safety in Spain after the country was hit by the worst flooding in recent history and at least 155 people were killed.
Rescuers are desperately scouring the area for survivors among mud-caked towns and villages or in the wreckage of vehicles, some still with bodies of the dead trapped inside.
The footage captures the moment Spain’s military emergency unit rescued the distressed woman, who appeared unable to move, using a large metal cage attached to a helicopter.
A separate video shows a baby being airlifted to safety in the arms of a rescuer.
Spain has begun three days of mourning after a Mediterranean storm unleashed torrential rains and torrents of water, sweeping away people, cars and homes and killing 92 in Valencia alone.
More than 1,200 military personnel and rescuers equipped with drones are involved in the effort as King Felipe VI warned that the emergency was “still not over”.
Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, said in reference to the hundreds of cars and trucks still stranded on mud-stained roads: “Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles.”
Government ministers have warned that the death toll is likely to rise, with many people still missing and some areas remaining inaccessible to rescuers throughout Wednesday.
Spanish national weather service AEMET put parts of the hardest-hit eastern Valencia region on the highest alert level for torrential rain on Thursday.
Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s prime minister, has urged residents of the eastern Valencia and Castellon provinces to stay at home.
He said: “Please, stay at home... follow the calls of the emergency services… Right now the most important thing is to save as many lives as possible.”
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The floods in Valencia battered the region’s infrastructure, sweeping away bridges, roads, rail tracks and buildings as rivers burst their banks.
Emilio Argüeso Torres, the Valencia region’s deputy interior chief, spoke with The Telegraph from a makeshift command centre on the edge of the flood zone. He said: “We are finding people who have been in cellars with the water up to their necks since Tuesday.”
Five miles south of Valencia, the town of Paiporta resembles the set of a Hollywood disaster movie.
On Thursday morning, thousands of dazed locals streamed towards a fresh water distribution point, which was nothing more than a broken pipe manned by a local volunteer.
Cars were strewn across the streets and poised at improbable angles against walls and lampposts.
Widespread looting left store fronts with windows smashed in, their shelves emptied of all provisions.
Joining the queue for water with plastic bottles in hand, Marisol Lara, a 62-year-old widow who grew up in Paiporta, said: “The authorities are not here – not the mayor, no one.”
She adds: “If there is no water to drink, we cannot live.”
The death toll is the worst on record for Spanish flooding since 1973, when at least 150 people were estimated to have died in the southeastern provinces of Granada, Murcia and Almeria.
On Wednesday, a 71-year-old British man died in hospital from cardiac arrest, hours after being rescued from his home on the outskirts of Alhaurin de la Torre, where he had been suffering from hypothermia.
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Regional authorities said late on Wednesday that it appeared there was no one left stranded on rooftops or in cars after helicopters saved some 70 people.
But ground crews and citizens continue to inspect vehicles and homes damaged by the onslaught of water.
The defence ministry said soldiers alone had rescued 110 people and recovered 22 bodies by Wednesday night.
Ángel Martínez, an official of a military emergency unit, told Spain’s national radio broadcaster RNE on Thursday: “We are searching house by house.”