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3 weeks ago
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THIS is the first picture of a mother and baby who were swept away by the devastating Spanish floods as her husband tried to save them.
Antonio Tarazona, lost his wife Lourdes Maria Garcia, 34, and their three-month daughter Angeline on Tuesday as flash floods swept across the southern and eastern parts of the country.
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GettyThe 59-year-old was forced to watch on helplessly as his car carrying his family was swept away by the torrents of water while his wife shouted at him from the roof of the vehicle.
After making a televised plea for information on their whereabouts, officials later informed the father-of-three that the bodies of his wife and youngest child had been found in the vehicle.
In the TV appeal, the devastated father described the last time he saw his family around 9 pm on Tuesday as they tried to make their way from Paiporta to Valencia after visiting Angeline’s grandmother.
“I managed to get out of the car and when I tried to get hold of our baby, the current took me and I hit something,” he explained.
“The car went in another direction and I saw my wife with our baby shouting for help from the roof, but that’s the last time I saw them.
“In 15 minutes we went from driving on a dry road to seeing all the cars floating.
“Initially the car was rammed against a traffic sign, but then it moved and I saw how the force of the water carried them away.”
“I had already been lucky not to have died in the attempt, I couldn’t do anything…It was impossible,” he added.
Before Lourdes died she managed to make a desperate phone call to the family’s nanny Clara Andres.
The helpless mother had already been separated from her husband and told Andres that she “feared the worst,” the nanny told Spanish newspaper ABC.
“Lourdes told me she would try to hold out as long as she could, for her daughter, and asked me to look after her other two children,” Andres recalled.
The nanny confirmed that Tarazona and Lourdes’ other two children, Bajix, 13, and Sofia, 10, are “luckily okay.”
Their father was rescued early on Wednesday morning unharmed after he managed to cling to a fence.
Tarazona was taken to a local sports centre converted into an emergency refuge area.
DEVASTATION
The death toll which currently stands at at least 95 is expected to rise as the search for more victims continues.
Around 40 of these deaths occurred in Paiporta, according to a “provisional” tally carried out by officials.
“The victims are going to be in their dozens,” Paiporta’s mayoress Maria Isabel Albalat Asensi said.
“There were a lot of people in their homes which in Paiporta are single-storey and water has entered them and they haven’t been able to get out.
“There are a lot of people who went to move their cars and never came back.”
Paiporta with a population of just over 20,000 people is the epicentre of one of Spain’s worst natural disasters.
Shocking footage from the town shows flash floods wiping out an entire bridge in just seconds.
As a search for bodies and those still missing continues, Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles holds out hope that more survivors will be rescued.
Over 1,000 soldiers have been deployed to support local emergency workers in the search.
However, fears are high for further devastation as a fresh storm warning has been issued for the Campina Gaditana region in the south of the country.
AP
EPA
AP
English (US)