Teams from Spain's Military Emergency Unit (UME) started cleaning up CV36 highway near Valencia, Spain on Friday morning (November 1), three days after the flash floods that killed 158 people, Reuters reports.
The disaster could become Europe's worst storm-related disaster in over five decades.
"There's a total of 158 people to which must be added dozens and dozens of missing," minister in charge of cooperation with Spain's regions, Angel Victor Torres, told a press conference.
A year's worth of rain fell in eight hours in parts of the Valencia region on Tuesday (October 29).
The tragedy is already Spain's worst flood-related disaster in modern history, and meteorologists say human-driven climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and destructive.
In 2021, at least 185 people died in heavy flooding in Germany. Prior to that, 209 people died in Romania in 1970 and floods in Portugal in 1967 killed nearly 500 people.
