Caked in mud from head to toe, a resident of Alfafar on Friday tried to clear a massive puddle of sludge away from his front door with only a plank of wood for a broom.
At times the Sisyphean task appeared to overwhelm him, and he stood up to survey a neighbourhood turned upside down by the deadliest flash floods in Europe for 50 years.
Cars lay piled on top of each other. Shattered windows and splintered doors were strewn on the ground. And everywhere, covering everything, was a thick, brown layer of mud.
On Friday, helpless residents of this ruined suburb of Valencia turned their fury at the lack of assistance from the government and army. With road-access limited by the devastation, they had been cut off from most of the rescue efforts spreading out across the east coast.
“They have done absolutely nothing. For the first 48 hours all we saw were police helicopters overhead,” said Laura Prieto, 42.
By Friday morning, military pumping trucks had arrived to flush water, cars and corpses out of underground car parks. But many areas of the town remained inaccessible to rescuers, including the nearby neighbourhood of Albal.
Adding to the residents’ anger, Valencia’s regional president, Carlos Mazón, on Friday ordered civilian volunteers to stop heading to flood-hit districts as he said their efforts were blocking roads and interfering with the emergency services.
“So who is going to bring help? Them in the regional government?” said Ms Prieto, who was visiting her parents when floodwaters barrelled through Alfafar’s narrow streets.
The CECOPI Valencian emergency coordinating centre later put out a statement emphasising that the “help of volunteers was essential” – but asked them not to use private vehicles to reach the devastated zones.
Many residents complained bitterly about the delay in the regional government issuing an extreme weather alert after heavy rain began falling inland.
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Luis Miguel García Caballero was visiting his parents and two brothers, one of whom has autism, in their ground-floor apartment in the Parque Alocosa neighbourhood on Tuesday evening.
“The alert was so late that the floodwater was above 1.5 metres when it arrived. The alert arrived in the middle of the emergency and not before. I had already been seeing videos of the floods sent by my partner who lives in Paiporta, just a few miles away,” said Mr García Caballero, a 38-year-old who works at Ford’s factory at Almussafes.
Having helped an elderly neighbour in her wheelchair and his mother up to higher floors, Mr García Caballero said he and other local residents could only watch in horror as a man in his car was killed as a line of other vehicles crashed into him from behind. “He was beeping to get help but there was no way to get to him.”
Video footage published on Friday showing the bewildering speed at which the floodwaters appeared, rose and became raging torrents in Valencian streets.
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One clip from the town of Paiporta, where the majority of the 202 confirmed victims died, shows how in just seconds the flood starts and begins ripping through homes, shops and bars.
In Alfafar, Mr García Caballero also hit out at the authorities for the sluggish response.
“The alert was late and then they ignored us; 48 hours after, on Thursday evening, we saw the first UME [rescue] teams, and today [Friday] some water and other supplies.
“The only people here to help on Wednesday were the local rice farmers, who came in their tractors to move the worst of the debris as best they could.”
In La Torre, another southern Valencian suburb, 81-year-old Miguel Pérez told how he believed he had been saved when “five minutes from death” after water raged into the traditional market gardener home with a back patio he has lived in all his life.
Mr Pérez had helped his 77-year-old wife, Emilia Compán, to stand on the kitchen sink when he was knocked sideways by a surge.
“I and the water smashed through the big wooden kitchen door into the front of the house, and then I could not see Emilia. I was holding onto the arm of a sofa that had become lodged solid with one hand, and keeping above water by holding a floating gas canister with the other.”
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Mr Pérez remained in the water for four hours.
“Emilia was saying ‘I´m OK’ every few minutes, but then she went quiet and I thought she’d died. Then I lost all hope and feeling in my limbs, but two firemen smashed through my front door to rescue me and I learned that my wife had been winched out with a rope.”
The lateness of the storm alert meant many died as they tried to rescue their cars from potential flood damage.
“In the building across from me they have found several bodies in the garage, and I think that could have been me and my children,” said Núria Casasus from Benetúser.
“At about 7pm on Tuesday evening, when the water level was beginning to rise, me and my husband went down to the garage to take our cars out. I feel awful now to think that I took our 10 and 13 year-olds with us. We could have all died for the sake of our cars,” said Ms Casasus, a 48-year-old secondary school teacher.
