On the morning of Tuesday, November 4, while a weather warning was being issued for the Valencian community in Spain, I was on a flight to Madrid.

Since then, 214 people have been confirmed dead and hundreds more remain missing, lost in the worst flooding the country has seen in decades.

A year’s worth of rain fell in an hour over the Valencia region, an autonomous community on the Mediterranean coast and home to more than five million people.

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The unprecedent weather meant buildings were flooded, rivers burst their banks, and thousands of people caught off guard were left without homes, power, or running water.

Watching the news unfold in real-time from the capital, while torrential rain poured into the streets outside every night, was a surreal experience.

I arrived in the city on Tuesday morning and walked across the airport tarmac under a fine, cold drizzle, weather not unlike October in England.

Visiting Madrid with old friends, we were expecting the characteristic blue skies and crisp, chilly air of the high-altitude city in the autumn, and although the days were bright the evenings of our trip saw a deluge of rainfall that prevented Spanish life from happening in its streets.

Thunder and lightning hit on our first night, visible between the buildings in its winding streets in the centre.

From the TV in one of our favourite bars we met with the news of the tragedy unfolding east of us on the coast.

Spanish media referred to the weather event leading to the flash floods as the DANA, the Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos or Isolated High Level Depression, and reports came as a shock following the lack of sufficient weather warnings or preventative safety measures imposed by local government.

We awoke in the morning to the streets of Madrid awash with rainfall, running in streams down slopes and gutters on the paved, pedestrianised centre, and to the news of a death toll that had, at that point, reached nearly 100 people.

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That day, now widely shared video footage began to emerge of mud and water flowing into buildings and sweeping cars, some with drivers still inside, down unrecognisable streets.

I spoke to Yasmin Stephenson, a friend whose mother is Valencian and has extended family living in and around the city.

She said: “I feel so helpless. My family lost power for days so we couldn’t make contact to find out if they were okay – now we have, and none of them want to speak much. They’re in shock.

“I want to help so desperately, but I’m stuck in another country. I feel angry with them as they’ve been abandoned, and I can’t help from here.”

Luckily, her immediate family were unhurt, but Miss Stephenson explained that anecdotal evidence suggests the death count is far higher than what has been reported.

She told the story of her cousin, trapped in her car in chest-deep flood water by a floating lorry, who escaped and walked 24 hours through mud to get back to her young children. A friend’s father was found drowned in his own living room.

She added: “The crazy thing is that these aren’t one in a million stories, I’m hearing hundreds more like this. Probably everyone I’ve spoken to knows one or more people who’ve died or have been lost.”

Aid has been slow to arrive, and many of the worst affected towns have yet to see any help other than ordinary volunteers, arriving in their thousands by trekking through mud and flood water to help however they could.

“The feeling is that the actual storm was inevitable, but the deaths were completely preventable,” Miss Stephenson said.

“There’s a real sense of anger across the whole country, but particularly Valencia. People feel they’ve been completely abandoned.”

In Madrid, where 18mm of rain poured between midnight and 6am on the city’s normally vibrant Halloween celebrations there was a palpable feeling of shock.

This, which felt torrential, was nothing compared to the 200mm which fell over Valencia in less than 12 hours. Some estimates are even higher. In Chiva, east of Valencia, it is believed that 320mm fell in just over four hours.

The topic of the floods became near unavoidable at meetings with friends who live and work in the city. Some travelled to Valencia to help with the relief effort, as it emerged that only 500 more soldiers had been deployed to assist rescue teams, bringing the total to 1,700 on Friday morning.

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Emergency services were unable to pass collapsed roads and residents lived in buildings without amenities – some alongside the dead bodies of their loved ones.

Since I’ve returned from my trip, I’ve watched closely the backlash that has followed the catastrophe in Spain.

As blame is passed from local to central government, weather warning systems and urban city planning to King Felipe himself, all that’s clear is that more should have been done to protect the lives lost in the floods.

And knowing that extreme weather events like this one will only become more severe and more extreme in our changing climate, more must be done to protect the lives which will be touched by the next one.

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