“Here in the first two days we didn’t see anyone coming to help. Nobody! “I know it’s not a matter of one day or two, but we need help.”
The water reached up to 3 meters in the house of Aroa García’s mother, in Alfafar, at the gates of Valencia.
All the furniture on the ground floor is now a muddy mess that accumulates in front of the door of this semi-detached house, where a group of neighbors and family members briskly remove shovelfuls of mud. A stone horse is one of the few things that have been saved in the small patio that precedes the house.
Above the door, a name that reflects the dream and effort of a lifetime: “Villa Por Fin”.
Aroa speaks with a contained anger at the abandonment with which he feels those affected by the floods that have already left at least 214 dead are being treated, but his voice breaks when explaining the house’s motto: “this house is the fruit After a lot of work, we had finally achieved it.”
The woman looks with anguish at her mother, who is still on the roof terrace where she took refuge. the night when the water swept away the entire neighborhood. The old woman’s little dog pokes his head out without understanding the hustle and bustle that enters and leaves the house.
“She is still in shock, very scared, she doesn’t want to go down, she doesn’t understand what has happened,” she explains, submerged up to mid-calf in the muddy water that accumulates in front of the house. His street no longer has an exit: a wall of cars dragged by the flood, tree trunks, containers and furniture seals the way.
“Only volunteers have helped us, there are zillions and we are very grateful, but we need professional help to start clearing the debris so that we can move forward,” he says helplessly in front of the pile of appliances, armchairs and belongings from a lifetime, now unrecognizable with the layer of mud that paints everything it measures. less than two meters in Alfafar.
The complaint is repeated on every portal of the municipalities most affected by the torrential rains that shook the Spanish southeast on October 29 and 30. And also the feeling that without the help of the volunteers they would be lost.
A slogan, “only the people save the people,” has been spreading through social networks, and is now a murmur among many of the thousands of volunteers who, with shovels or brooms on their shoulders, have been flooding the most vulnerable areas for a couple of days. affected in a flood of solidarity.
It can be seen on small improvised posters pasted on some of the vans that arrive at the center of Benetúser on this sunny morning, loaded with bottles of water, diapers or food. In the town there is a lack of everything because absolutely all the businesses are destroyed.
Salvador Orts, Miguel Alegre and Rosa Devesa have come from Denia with the car packed to capacity. They bring jars of cooked vegetables, 50 pairs of shoes that a friend donated to them, cookies and even incontinence pads that they distribute to whoever may need them.
“Everything bought by us or donated,” says Salvador, who does not understand how it can be that five days after the start of the tragedy “the help has taken so long to arrive and everything still looks like a battlefield.”
On the next street, a detachment of the Military Emergency Unit, known as UME, helps pump water from the parking lot of a Consum supermarket. They do not know how many vehicles may be left in the basement of the establishment or if there could be a deceased person inside.
The day before, what seemed impossible was done a few meters away. Civil Protection of Valencia managed to find alive a woman who had been trapped in her car for three days with the body of her sister-in-law.
But such miracles are not frequent.
“There are hundreds of missing people and we will not find many of them because the flood will have carried them to the sea,” says Salvador.
Going down a little, before reaching the Poio ravine, whose flood flooded Alfafar, Benetúser, Paiporta and other towns in the south of Valencia, Zineb Habuul looks out the window of his house on the ground floor of a three-story building.
The water almost reached the roof of the house, where you can still see some exquisitely decorated moldings in lilac, but they have already managed to remove almost all of the mud. “Aid? Except for volunteers and friends, no one has come here,” he laments with indignation.
He only has two small photographs of his children left, which he shows on the verge of tears. “We had just bought all the new furniture for my daughter’s room, they were still in boxes and everything went in the trash. “We have lost everything.”
Many residents recognize that the emergency services of the different units and administrations, both military and civil guard, firefighters, police or civil protection “are beginning to be seen more here,” says Zineb, “but to the houses, if there are no deaths “They have not entered.”
Zineb is a neighbor of the Colombian Juan José Loaiza and the Ukrainian Anna Filimonova, although in reality they were only neighbors for one day.
“We moved on Monday and on Tuesday the water took everything away”acknowledges the young man. Juan José and Anna are preparing their wedding, which they had planned for next day the 22nd. “Cancel it? Noooo. But the celebration will have to wait,” says Anna.
Both are grateful for the solidarity of the neighbors and the volunteers, “it makes us believe that there is humanity and that we are going to get out of this. If we have survived Covid and the war in Ukraine, we will also survive this,” the woman says excitedly.
A little further up, on Avenida Real in Madrid, María Pons, Joana Pérez and Amparo Sorlí watch from their doorway at 139 street as a crane unloads a caravan from the premises next to their building, which until Tuesday was Hussain butcher shop. Now it’s all reeds and mud.
The portal has the same line that runs through the entire neighborhood, which marks how far the water reached.
María says that on Tuesday night a woman spent hours clinging to the gate of the gate fighting against the waters that were dragging her. The water pressure did not allow the door to open.
“The neighbors were holding it as best they could from the inside so that it wouldn’t come loose, tying it with whatever they found until the current went down and they were able to get it into the building. The woman, luckily, was saved,” says the old woman.
Right next door, at the Raíces bar, the employees and the owner were also saved for a matter of minutes.
The Argentine Nacho Britos had gone to pick up his girlfriend who was working at the bar when the water came suddenly. He didn’t think about it, he grabbed the owner’s 7-year-old daughter, who had hidden in fear behind the bar, and they walked 20 or 30 meters down the street with water up to her waist and “a terrible force, already dragging cars and of everything” until someone opened a door that saved them.
“It was then that I received the alert from the Generalitat (the regional authority), when we were almost swept away by the current”counts between shovelful and shovelful of mud. Refrigerators, dishes and boxes full of unidentifiable food are stacked in front of the bar.
The alert caught Roberto Ballester standing on a fence watching how the torrent of mud carried away everything in its path. “I spent 4 hours there,” he says.
Roberto’s house is affected, but nothing remains of his workshop, where he made handmade drums.
The current dragged three vehicles from a rear parking lot that ended up knocking down the back wall of the premises, located in a building that is more than 150 years old. The three cars are still there, witnesses of a night of terror.
The remains of the drums and machines are piled up at the doors of the premises in a mountain that exceeds two meters. A bustle of people enters and leaves with buckets loaded with muddy packages that are impossible to identify.
“I don’t know anyone who is helping me,” Roberto admits.“they showed up here asking if I needed a hand and they haven’t stopped since.”
They are members of the World Missionary Movement church and their pastor, Ovidio Romero, says that today they had worship, but they have decided to change the church for shovels “because helping others is the best worship we could have.”
A little further on, a large photograph of a newborn baby for whom a Moon acts as a crib, surprises among shelves and muddy tables.
In front of it, Pedro Herráiz and Carolina Benavent eat some sandwiches with friends and neighbors on a break from cleaning their photography studio. They are no exception: they have also lost everything. But they pose for a photo with a smile, sandwich at the ready, and a victorious pose.
“What are we going to do? I don’t know, we have to sit down and think. Clean first”, Pedro says and his voice breaks. He specializes in children’s and pregnancy photography. A group of Spanish photographers have organized to lend them equipment and studios so they can continue working.
It is not because of the worst thing that Carolina and Pedro have gone through. Her three-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Now “she is perfect” and has already turned 11.
“Resilience is so important in human beings… We see how far the water has reached,” he says, pointing to the black line that marks the entire neighborhood, “from now on everything important is going to be above that level.”
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- “The government is not doing anything. Only young people are helping us”: the outrage over insufficient help in the tragedy in Spain