Spain's worst floods in a century have killed nearly 100 people in the Valencia region, with some victims still trapped in cars.

Amazing The floods killed at least 95 people in Spain between Tuesday night and Wednesday, and the number is expected to increase as the search and rescue operation continues on Thursday morning. Roads turned into raging rivers with little warning as torrential floods tore through the region east of Valencia, with mud puddles hurling stationary cars like cans in the worst natural disaster to hit a European country in a century.

Some areas received more than a year's worth of rain in just eight hours.

There were rescuers, including a couple who were trapped on the second floor of the house until a front-end loader was brought to safety. Denis Hlavaty braved this campaign of mud who was trapped at night in a gas station.

“I'm smiling and not crying” he said as he came out from where he took refuge. “It was a living hell.”

The Valencia suburb of Barrio de la Torre looked like it had been hit by a storm on Thursday. Cars were piled on top of each other on muddy roads, with downed trees and downed power lines woven into the mess. Most of the confirmed deaths as of Thursday morning were in the city.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, smashed,” bar owner Christian Viena told the Associated Press.

The rain had stopped by late Wednesday, leaving rescue workers largely diverted from the difficult task of retrieving victims.

“Unfortunately, there are people who have died among other vehicles,” said National Transport Minister Óscar Puente.

Spanish authorities have deployed about 1,000 soldiers to help search for survivors and find victims under the mud-covered rubble.

The country's defense minister said that the army had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people on Wednesday night.

“We are searching from house to house,” military rescue unit leader Ángel Martínez told RNE on Thursday in the town of Utiel, north of Valencia, where at least six people were confirmed dead.

“Sorrow is the people who died, and there were many,” said Encarna, a teacher from Utiel, while examining the ruins of his home. “This is my savings, my efforts, my life. But we are alive.”

Climate scientists blame the scale of the crisis on the convergence of factors related to human-caused climate change; the warm atmosphere enabled the storm systems to retain more moisture, the slow jet motion did not push the storm quickly, and the dry, drought-stricken soil of Valencia was unable to absorb the catastrophic rain.

The flooding left rail lines and highways impassable, leaving Valencia isolated on Thursday.

The high-speed train service linking the capital city of Valencia with the national capital of Madrid is unlikely to be back up and running before the weekend, officials said.

While Valencia was left covered in debris and devastation that would take weeks to clean up, the rest of the country was filled with grief.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was heading to the region on Thursday – the first day of three days of official mourning – to witness the devastation.