– When you arrive, don’t call me because I won’t have coverage. You’ll see that the gate is open, the water has broken it, you go straight through and yell at me if I’m on the top floor.
Arriving in Picanya, the neighboring municipality of Paiporta, is the apocalypse. The roads are closed to cars. In the end, all you have to do is park on the shoulder and cross the highway on foot. Endless lines of pilgrims with brooms avoid roundabouts and winding cars. From time to time, a soldier appears and shouts to move aside to let a relief convoy pass. Most cars have something written on the windows: “SOS”, “Bilbao Fire Department”, “Getafe Police”. As you enter the town, everything is brown and mountainous. In Picanya, it smells rotten. The children were exiled, they disappeared.
Vanesa Sanchis sits on the upper floor of what was her house, in a beautiful residential neighborhood of duplexes and tree-lined alleys next to the deadliest Poyo ravine, through which “we walked the dogs “. The ride no longer exists. He is a journalist at Valencian public radio and television In Punt, from where he informed citizens a few days before the disaster, but where he has not been able to return since the fateful Tuesday, October 29.
Although army trucks and teams of electricians or plumbers can already be seen in the streets, his life is miles from being normal a week after the torrent which rose to about 20 meters of his house took everything away, including the doors of his house. “We can’t move, we can’t leave the house because it’s open.” They just replaced a bowler hat at the entrance, “a very nice guy who didn’t even charge me, told me to put a review on the Internet and that’s what he’s happy with”. At ground zero of DANA, there was looting and theft. “My husband finally told me, listen, I take a knife and I put it under the pillow, like the neighbor, we take it into the bedroom just in case.” At the moment, there are not enough locksmiths or enough police officers.
A normal day in Vanesa’s life is very unusual. First of all, they are missing their daughters – Daniela, 11, and Claudia, 7 – who they had to send temporarily to two school friends, one from each family. “We didn’t want them to experience that.” When the ground floor, where the living room and kitchen were located, was flooded for almost two meters, everyone went up to the first floor, where the bedrooms are located. “We put them to bed dressed in case we had to escape the water. “We watched all night.” When they saw that the level had dropped, they blocked the doors with the mud accumulated at the entrance. “I jumped out of the bathroom window and went to my sister’s house. There I charged my cell phone and was able to talk to my mother.
The second jump he made was with his eldest daughter, he said goodbye to her and left her with a family of friends in Valencia, “and I didn’t see her again.” The little girl continued the same path the next day, with her schoolbag and a pair of clothes. This morning he asked Vanesa how her “babies” were doing. He doesn’t know it, but all the toys were taken away this morning by the loader working in the street.
Day after day
At Vanesa, we don’t set the alarm because there is no electricity. But it’s not necessary either. At seven o’clock it is almost daylight and almost all the neighbors come to the door to clean the house, the things and collect the cups and papers from the cupboards. Remove the mud, remove the mud, remove the mud. For breakfast there is no coffee or toast. “I haven’t tried the coffee in a week, plus I have celiac disease and there’s nothing for me in the hot menus they prepare here. “I take a piece of bread, some muffins they brought me… and I clean up.” Sometimes the impossible, like important documents and photos hanging on clothespins where clean clothes once stood. This afternoon, he will try to ask for the help advertised online, but he is asked for the name of the notary and the date of the house, “you think I remember that!” He takes off his gloves. Two injuries appear following the removal of mud protected with adhesive tape.
The kitchen remained in the chassis. There is no microwave, no washing machine, no cutlery drawer. There are cleaning products. A sad knife rests on an orphaned bench that will have to be removed. The water soaked everything, it even moved a partition a few centimeters. To live again, they must redo the ground floor. Cut the walls, change the electricity, install an entire kitchen, a sofa, a table, a TV, the glass doors that the water tore off… Everything again. “But look, we are.” For now they’re going to do it themselves, with an architect friend, and we’ll see who gets help. When they can close it, they will go to a small apartment left for them in Valencia. Like everything, “for now”.
They have some clothes, but with the mud, they have to change every day. “The shower? Yesterday for the first time at my sister’s house, there is a wire here and it comes out cold? Gas leaks have prompted many municipalities to cut off supplies for fear of explosions like the one in Chiva, which left 19 volunteers drunk. Tap water, no matter how much it comes out, cannot be drunk. Vanesa doesn’t drink it, but she discovers at that moment that it was forbidden in all the towns affected by the floods. “They are warning on Instagram, Internet and Facebook, and here we have no electricity or coverage, how are we going to know if we have barely seen the news!” In fact, to find out where to eat the first few days, he had to ask a member of the UME. “He told me that at the institute they donated food and clothes. Then we go. My husband can eat something hot, I can eat something hot until they say it’s for celiacs, nothing.
Do the laundry
Today it’s time to do the laundry. To do this, I have to walk 20 minutes in the mud to my car and go to the village of Xirivella, where Vanesa’s mother lives and where life continues in the same way because the water does not reach there. That’s 6 kilometers. It took us half an hour on dusty and congested roads. “This is how we live, lawless city.” There is media coverage and Vanesa takes the opportunity to send and listen to all kinds of messages of help, encouragement and actions. Do, do, do. When she arrives and hugs her mother, “Mom,” she cries. But he quickly changes his gesture and recovers. Solve, solve, solve. “Honey, I bought you some clean sheets and tablecloths.” He takes care of the children of Vanesa’s sister, whose house was also flooded. “What tablecloths, mom, if we eat sausage and bread in bed?”, he laughs and hugs her.
Vanesa and her husband, a salesman, find themselves without a vehicle. They are trying to recover it, like almost 100% of the inhabitants of the 65 municipalities buried by the waters. In Paiporta, its neighboring town, 95% of the vehicle fleet has disappeared, according to the mayor. While waiting for the car to arrive, it’s time to walk, anywhere. If necessary, even Valencia. Get food, get water, find a locksmith, go to the pharmacy. At the moment there are no shuttles for the population of Picanya. They walk, wait or shoot family members or acquaintances. “Here, you have to find a life for everything.” For now.
At nightfall, neighbors disappear from doors and streets. Without light, there is nothing and it smells like mud. Although a crew from Valladolid is trying to solve the problem by pulling a cable to retrieve the line, for now they are still using stand-alone lamps and candles. “The first night I had to attend my daughter’s first communion, it made me sad,” he says, but it had to be done, he is convinced. And what do you do when you can’t clean it? When nothing more can be done because it’s dark, Vanesa and her husband go upstairs, light two Decathlon lanterns and chat, or read, or eat something cold on the mattress. “I call the girls and we talk for a while, they are happy, they have school and so they don’t experience that.” What is the first thing you would like to do? “See my daughters. “I want to get out of here and be able to do things like take a hot shower.”
Returning from Xirivella, another traffic jam, as in all of Horta Sud, which is experiencing an unprecedented mobility crisis because there is no other way to move than by bike, legs or cars, which clutter everything . His phone rings. His sister is upset because today for the first time they were able to enter the garage and they lost the cars and the memories. “Right away, I’m going, come on, calm down, we’ll get there,” he said energetically. “Leave me here, seriously, I’ll get there sooner by walking, I’ll get to the roundabout straight away.” She has to go to the school to pick up hot food and second-hand clothes to continue cleaning tomorrow. He needs to go hug and help his sister. You need to go online to get help today. Climb slightly towards Picanya, passing the stuck and stoic cars. Nobody whistles. Vanesa, the journalist who appears on television and does politics at the gates of the Corts or the Palau de la Generalitat, disappears over the mound to her new life, in mud-stained tights and borrowed rubber boots. It is the seventh day since the flood. “We have to move forward.” For now.
