Francisco Murgui left home this Tuesday night, shortly after the Spanish Civil Protection alerted the population about the storm. He wanted to save the car and motorcycle he had in the garage. “The last thing I know is that the neighbors saw him clinging to a tree before being swept away by the current,” says his daughter, María Murgui. “I don’t know if anyone managed to save him or if he went somewhere. If something happened, we don’t know, because no one tells us anything.”
María, her mother and her brother, residents of Sedaví, a town of 10,000 inhabitants a few kilometers from Valencia, are in an incessant search for the 57-year-old man whose image is shared on social networks with the word “disappeared.” “We started sending the photo to everyone, I spoke with the media here in Spain, I spoke with the police, the firefighters, the civil guard. They don’t say anything. They don’t do anything. “They are just rescuing bodies and emptying garages.”
The 27-year-old is not resigned. Talk to the Observer on the phone while you search the surrounding area for his father. He describes him in as much detail as possible: “He is dark-skinned. He’s six feet tall. He has a belly, but skinny legs. He wears a black Adidas jacket with white stripes and blue shorts. I don’t remember what shoes I had, if not, I’d tell you that too.” The voice is clear, the tone confident: “I’m trying to stay calm so as not to lose control. We have to try to continue and find a solution.”
The images of the streets of Sedaví, where everything happened, were among the first to go around the world in the international press, with a photograph of the Valencian municipality that illustrated the impact of the sudden floods: a street full of piles of washed-up cars. because of the rains. But in recent days Paiporta has been the center of news and headlines, and the situation in Sedaví has been less visible, although the devastation in this municipality of Horta Sud is no less worrying. At least 12 people died, but everyone fears that the number will increase as the search and cleanup efforts progress. There are many basements in the houses in this area, according to neighbors. “Until all the water comes out of the basements, we won’t know [o número de desaparecidos]” a fire department source confirms to the Observer. “Where there are basements, there are people.” As in Paiporta, the lack of rain in the region had a perverse effect: since there was no risk of precipitation, the population was not warned sufficiently in advance. “No one was alerted here,” confirms the same source. This Thursday, the mayor of Sedaví, José Francisco Cabanes, shouted a warning about the situation in the municipality: “If they do not come [ajudar]”There will begin to be infections and diseases.” Humanitarian aid is “very urgent,” he said.
The police have cut off roads and access points, there is no mobile network or electricity and drinking water is unreliable. A source from the firefighters informs the Observer that 800 people are missing, but the authorities have not wanted to officially confirm the figures: the Spanish newspaper El Diário cites a document from the emergency committee for the disaster that says that 2,500 people are registered as missing. through calls from family and friends to number 112. This Thursday alone, 600 of these people will have been found alive. Which means that the list of people to search now has 1,900 names.
Encarnación Planels, 85, has not yet been found. The door of the house where he lives, in the center of Sedaví, is wide open. Inside, the nieces sweep the mud toward the street. “No one has seen her, but she does not appear and the entire interior of the house is destroyed,” says Pepa Juan. “My aunt lived alone. At first we thought someone had entered through the door, but no, it was the water. “His legs were very bad, he walked with a walker, he didn’t go up to the top floor of the house.”
The room, although destroyed, is full of photographs on the walls with images of hairstyles from other times. Single and childless, Encarnación was a hairdresser before retiring, and even used the ground floor as a salon to receive clients. The salon’s machines are already on the street with memories of other lives.
“We heard ‘help, help,’” says a neighbor, who saw the water destroying his next door. The anguish of Encarnación’s nieces is notorious. “They haven’t told us anything since Tuesday. The authorities do nothing. The only thing they do is not let us pass so they can help,” says Pepa Juan, who walked for an hour with her sister to get to the town. “Thank God that there are humane people who come and help. This is chaos. A woman went out to take out the trash and the water washed it away. Another woman had been dead under a car for two days and no one noticed.”
“It was this very kind and strong young man who got her out of there,” says a neighbor, on the next street, pointing to a young man with a dirty shirt and a tired face. He responds: “I put a blanket on her and put her in the trunk of her car. I couldn’t leave her there. “We can’t leave people like this.”
In the last few hours, some of the cases of disappearances have led to this outcome. Floods in Valencia have already killed more than 200 people. In the Sedaví City Hall there is a list of missing people, according to those who claim to have given the names to the organization. Questioned by the Observer, the municipality sends explanations to a local support center, which returns them to the Chamber.
“They say they will tell us if they know anything. But so far nothing,” Encarnación’s niece reaffirms. “Yesterday I already lost hope. Wait [a minha tia] dead, at least appear. But I have no hope in life.” How long is too long? “It happened on Tuesday. I hoped that on Wednesday they would tell us something, but nothing. Thursday, nothing. If someone finds someone, they must inform the City Council or the Red Cross that there is someone in their house. Tell the authorities. If you have not said anything to the authorities it is because you have not [está viva]That’s why not.”
A source from the Alicante Fire Department reveals to the Observer that the search for missing people has been interrupted since Thursday and that, for the moment, attention is focused on collecting bodies. “There is already very little hope for life. Yesterday the team stopped.”
This is a work against the clock by the ERICAM fire team (acronym for Emergency and Immediate Response Group of the Community of Madrid), a team specialized in rescue and urban searches that has just arrived from the Spanish capital. There are 50, including firefighters, doctors and search dogs. They arrived in Valencia this Friday and left precisely from Sedaví and Benetússer, two of the most affected towns. “We look for someone alive, but we only see dead people. “We have already found four dead.”
The members of this team are used to working in extreme situations, such as earthquakes or fires. Here they work in coordination with local firefighters and go to points where there are alleged victims. This is the case of a parking lot in the center of Sedaví that is completely flooded.
Three firefighters dressed in waterproof material enter the brown sea. One of them dives to a red dot in the muddy ocean. It’s a car. With an iron he breaks the glass and the vehicle begins to float. “It’s empty,” you hear with relief. Meanwhile, a van arrives to start taking water from the park. A tube is thrown into the water. “Give it to him, Pedro.” The handle moves as if it had a life of its own. The van has a capacity of five thousand liters of water and will soon be full.
One of the firefighters, with diving equipment, swims on the first floor (-1) of the parking lot. There are five cars afloat, he identifies them shortly after. These are empty, but there are many more submerged to check out. In addition, the park has a second lower floor (-2). Emptying all the water that accumulates there will take between two and three days, they say.
It is one of the rare situations in which a firefighter can rescue a body, they explain to the Observer. If the body is submerged, they can take it to the park entrance, but, in other cases, the victim’s body must not be touched and it is necessary to call a forensic doctor, which, in the situations witnessed by the Observer, in Hard-to-access streets blocked by mountains of cars and mud, it is difficult. The passing of a funeral van is the outcome that everyone fears, but that many anticipate.
Source: Observadora
