Floodwater Swallows Cars to Their Windows as Storm Adam Drowns Oliva

Muddy floodwater turned a residential street into a canal at dawn on Monday, October 19, submerging parked cars up to their windows as Storm Adam unleashed torrential rain on Spain’s eastern coast.

X user Carlos Aimeur Urios shared the footage, which he said his friend Ernest Parra sent him from Oliva. Filmed from a balcony while rain keeps falling, it shows the water covering the ground-floor garages of the townhouses opposite and rising to just below their balconies, where two residents stand watching. The taillights of a half-sunken car still glow beneath the surface.

Weather stations in Oliva recorded 640 liters of rain per square meter in just over 24 hours, 450 of them overnight, and the Girona river burst its banks. With roads impassable, helicopters became the only way out. Between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., the crews of 11 aircraft from the Civil Guard, the Military Emergencies Unit, Maritime Rescue and regional services winched about 150 people, including a baby, from rooftops and terraces in Oliva and nearby Pego.

Two people were found dead in Oliva: a man at a campsite and a woman with reduced mobility who lived alone on a ground floor. That brought the storm’s confirmed death toll to four, after two women died over the weekend in Barcelona and Sagunto. The regional government ordered people in 145 municipalities to stay indoors for much of the morning, and government delegate Pilar Bernabé said 450 people had been rescued so far.

Spain’s state weather agency called the episode one of extreme adversity. The only comparable event in the area dates back to November 3, 1987, when Oliva recorded 817 liters per square meter, still Spain’s 24-hour rainfall record.