A British woman who had to climb out of her car window before it was swept away along with the rest of her belongings in Spain’s floods says she is “lucky to be alive”.
Karen Loftus, 62, from Dorset, said she and her husband were headed south to their home in Alicante on Tuesday evening when they were hit by “unbelievably heavy rain”.
At about 6pm, traffic on the AP-7 motorway came to a standstill. The next thing they noticed was the bridge ahead being “washed away”, said Mrs Loftus, who is the chief executive of UK-based charity Community Action Network.
Latest updates on Spain’s floods
“A lorry went down the bridge, I don’t know what happened,” she told Sky News.
Within 10 minutes of them being stationary, “the water had risen up and started to come into the car”, she said, while people around them were “smashing windows to get out”.
“We were seeing all the cars bat into each other and stuck up,” said Mrs Loftus, who spends part of the year working remotely from their second home in the southeastern Spanish city of Elche.
The floods surrounding Mr and Mrs Loftus on Tuesday. Pic: Steve Loftus
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‘People were screaming’
She said pressure from the water meant they could not open the car’s doors and “we started to float and hit a lorry”.
Mrs Loftus and her husband decided to flee, a potentially life-saving decision, as she said: “Just after we got out of the car, another car floated on top of our car.”
She took her phone and passport and made her way out through the window, with the water reaching her chest once she touched the ground.
“It was raging, cars were floating about, people were screaming.”
Residents look at cars piled up after being swept away by floods in Valencia. Pic: AP
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Mrs Loftus and her husband moved towards the central reservation, but feared water gushing from a ravine.
“We thought we were about to be washed away so we ran up the road and it was pitch black dark,” she said.
“We banged on the door of the lorry”, and found a “fantastic” Moroccan driver who picked them up.
‘Lucky to be alive’
Describing how with the lorry’s lights submerged, the driver had to get them through five feet of water, she said: “We only just made it through.
“It was just like a disaster movie. You know when you think ‘I could die here’. It was so utterly scary.”
While Mr and Mrs Loftus “lost everything”, including their car and some belongings of 20 years, they said they are “lucky to be alive”.
“We are not gone,” said Mrs Loftus, who stayed in a hostel in Valencia last night.
“There are many families that aren’t in our position. If we’d just stayed in the car I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
