FLASH FLOODS CLAIM AT LEAST 71 VACATIONERS CAMPING AT BASE OF PYRENEES IN SPAIN.

Byline: Associated Press 

The first drops fell as families finished dinner or whiled away the evening playing cards inside their dusty campers and pop-up tents.

Within an hour, the drizzle turned to a torrent and the campground at the foot of the Pyrenees became a muddy graveyard. Flash floods killed at least 71 vacationers, sweeping one body 10 miles downstream and burying another, covering all but the hand - still clinging to a branch.

Survivors escaped by perching in trees with their children, crowding into a campground restroom on higher ground - or simply, by being lucky.

``It seemed like an eternity,'' said Samuel Perez, who rode out the flood in his car with his 8- and 12-year-old children as boulders rushed by, smashing the windshield and filling the car with water.

Police said 650 people, mostly Spaniards, were at the camp site when the flooding began Wednesday night on the outskirts of Biescas, a tiny town in the green mountains that form the French and Spanish border, a favorite vacation spot for Europeans.

Hundreds of divers, firefighters and other rescue workers moved into the area as dawn broke Thursday to search for survivors. Officials said dozens of people were still missing by evening.

``I ran to try to help a girl. But a time comes when it's either you or them,'' one survivor, Antonio Espinosa, said from his hospital bed.

``I got out alive, but I don't know what happened to the girl.''

A British couple, who only gave their names as Ann and Roy from Yorkshire, England, waited out the storm in a tree, clutching their two young children as water rose more than a yard high.