“There is no electricity, there is no water, there is no food, there is no telephone, there are no cars. What do we do? Ramón González asks, but does not wait for an answer. Fingers covered in dry clay slide across the cell phone screen to show the tools and construction warehouse (two floors and a lifelong project) that was consumed by the floods.
His clothes are dyed, his eyes are tired. “I lost everything,” he tells the Observer as he drains the muddy waters of his in-laws’ house. “Between the two families we lost eight cars.” The woman waves as she moves the darkened water toward the street.
There is a contrast between the silence of the night and the noise of the day in the Valencian Community, which continues to see the number of deaths due to DANA (acronym for DANA) increase every minute. Isolated depression at high levels), the storm that hit the region. Floods in Spain have already killed more than 160 people, with almost half occurring in the municipality of Paiporta, in the Valencia region.
The sounds mix. A backhoe plows through the mud, revealing something resembling what the ground once was. A child wets his hands with the silky texture of the material. On balconies and windows, neighbors comment on the debris they see with a privileged view.
“What you see is the same since the water arrived two days ago,” says Nuria Lajusticia, 38 years old. “There are police around here, but apparently they are only doing patrols. We have no water, no electricity, no coverage…” he lists. Together with her husband, they admit to being afraid of the coming days. “Everything we had rotted. “What we had frozen thawed because we don’t have electricity.” They have no idea what is said or written about the place where they live. “We don’t have television, we don’t have internet, we don’t have anything.” At 18 weeks pregnant, Lajusticia seems worried, but cannot contact the doctor accompanying her.
On the same street, an older woman with thick white hair is moving through the mud with a wooden stick. trekking. To the question “where are you going?”, he answers: “To the end of the world.” Smile and solve the mystery: “They tell me there is water in the sports center.”
Others also join the informal pilgrimage to the street, a hundred meters away, where there is a line to fill bottles and jugs with a cloudy brown liquid. Who knew that a destroyed house with a flooded garage could be a blessing for the neighbors? Using a pump, all the water is extracted that will serve many families. “It’s not drinking water, but you can always remove the mud and clean it, flush the toilet,” explains a young man in line.
[Já saiu o quinto e último episódio de “A Grande Provocadora”, o novo podcast Plus do Observador que conta a história de Vera Lagoa, a mulher que afrontou Salazar, desafiou os militares de Abril e ridicularizou os que se achavam donos do país. Pode ouvir aqui, no Observador, e também na Apple Podcasts, no Spotify e no Youtube. E pode ouvir aqui o primeiro episódio, aqui o segundo, aqui o terceiro e aqui o quarto episódio .]
In recent hours, the search for water has become a priority for a large part of the population of the Valencian Community. Around 366,000 people remain without access to drinking water in at least 20 municipalities in the region, writes the local newspaper Las Provincias, citing data from the municipality of the Province of Valencia. If in the center of Valencia there are already supermarkets without natural water in stockIn small cities where collectors or trucks do not arrive daily, the case is even more dramatic. Along the riverbed in Paiporta there are many people filling buckets and drums with water for various tasks other than direct consumption.
Therefore, water has become the most sought after commodity.
“Yes, you can drink it, it’s drinkable!” The words resonate like a song of angels for those who are lucky enough to be on the other side of Paiporta. A group of men organize two queues so that everyone can access the crystal clear water that comes from a water supply point. Word of mouth mobilizes almost a hundred people in a few minutes.
Throughout the day, the city streets become increasingly crowded and clashes with the police are frequent. First it is with a family of four people: a couple and two children who decide to walk to Valencia due to the lack of help from the authorities. With a backpack on his back, the father, with a child in his arms, ends up exchanging accusations with an agent: “Where is the help? Where is the help?” he repeats, visibly excited. Later, a new moment of tension with the police: some officers caught a young man stealing from a supermarket, but the population rebelled against his arrest.
In the last three days, police have arrested dozens of people for similar robberies at shopping centers and stores. In Paiporta, in minimarkets and supermarkets, the scenario is repeated: empty shelves, vandalized boxes, broken doors. “It’s the apocalypse. It seems the walking Dead. You see things on television and you say: poor people. You never imagine that it’s going to happen to you,” says María José, leaving a supermarket, also holding the purchases she didn’t pay for. “I never thought about entering a supermarket and stealing. Never,” he admits.
Moral subversion begins when one has the ability to question certain rules of conduct. And the rules seem to have changed for a population that does not believe in government support: given the difficulties on the ground, the president of the Valencian Community government this afternoon asked the Spanish army for help to bring aid to the populations affected by DANA, saying that he fears sources of livelihood in the near future.
“There are pineapples, there are pineapples,” he is heard shouting. Pallets with several packages of canned pineapple fly away in minutes, collected by people surrounding the Mercadona supermarket. A company source tells the Observer that the store is “devastated,” but that they are making available to the population what they can “save from the warehouse.” Several employees of the supermarket chain are there. Help comes like this.
The muddy streets are shaped by the wheels of the various supermarket carts that cross the city. “Have you seen the subway? I’ll take you there.” Carme Lorente, 18, arrived on foot from Torrent, a town in Valencia. She came to help a friend, who “with everything that happened, was left homeless.” I brought her some things, like “ clothes and a book.” Astonished by the last item, he responds: “My psychologist recommended it to me,” he says, followed by a laugh. It’s good to have a bad day (The good thing about having a bad dayin free translation).
For almost all of us who live in the region, it is not safe to say that they have been bad days. It is true that the rain has begun to subside and part of the mud is being removed, but the material damage – for now “incalculable” – is beginning to be taken into account and the first faces are being given to the fatal victims of the tragedy that devastated the south and east of Spain.
Another 83-year-old man, who lived alone with a dog, was found this Thursday in Paiporta and died when water entered the kitchen. The mud made it difficult to move the body and, as the Observer testified at the scene, the intervention of several firefighters was necessary.
On streets littered with cars and debris, it is also not unlikely that there will be people who will have to live with bodies in their homes until rescue teams arrive. The Spanish press reports that there are emergency teams searching for “dozens and dozens” of missing people.
Source: Observadora
