Woman found alive trapped in car beside body of sister three days after floods devastated Valencia

A woman has miraculously been found alive after three days trapped in a car with her deceased sister-in-law in , Spain, this week.

the woman was rescued from a flooded tunnel in Benetússer, a municipality on the outskirts of Valencia. Rescuers are said to have heard her desperate cries for help among thousands of vehicles abandoned in the tunnel.

Local reports claimed in a car under a number of other cars piled on top. The tunnel she was found in, meanwhile, has been dubbed the “black tunnel” by El Mundo, a leading Spanish news outlet.

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Regional Civil Protection president Martin Perez simply said: "After three days we’ve found a person alive in a car."

Elsewhere in Benetússer, Civil Guard divers were reportedly told there are still people trapped inside garages, but as time passes the less likely it is survivors will be found

Rescuers including firefighters are using volunteer tractor drivers to pull cars out of the water before they are checked for people inside. It is believed cars further into the tunnel were already inside it when they were stopped by the flash flooding, while other cars, debris and people were swept into the tunnel from outside.

Authorities have recovered at least 211 bodies so far and the death toll is expected to rise with over 2,000 people still missing.

Flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away everything in their path as the natural disaster caused havoc. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands saw livelihoods shattered.

Thousands of volunteers have been helping to clear away the thick layers of mud and debris that still covered houses, streets and roads, all while facing power and water cuts, and shortages of some basic goods.

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo riverbed, produced walls of water that overflowed river banks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives, with many coming home from from work on Tuesday evening.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs while residents tried to take refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary”.

When the authorities sent the alert to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the phenomenon and asked people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or garages, which became death traps.

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.