“We are very concerned by the situation, DANA has not acted with the same virulence throughout the municipal territory. THE the damage is considerableto the intensity of the wind and rain, we must add the impact of the hail which left us all speechless. These were bullets which, in some cases They exceeded the size of golf balls“, said El Ejido Mayor Francisco Góngora during a media appearance on Tuesday.
The municipality of Ejidense is working at full capacity to quantify the damage, which is very important, and restore normality with 100% of municipal services functional and with the collaboration of external services. According to initial data, the roofs of 4,500 hectares of greenhouses and 20 hectares of cultivation.
In this first damage assessment in El Ejido, damage to industrial buildings is reported, thousands of dented cars and broken windowshouses with damaged roofs, porches and basements, impassable roads and paths, as well as the roofs of municipal facilities and sports halls that have suspended their activity.
Góngora explained that the night was complicated, but the day was no less complicated. “The farms are in full collection, not only of plastic sheeting, but also fell on the crops. The panorama is daunting, it will take several days and we will see what actions we can take to mitigate the very serious economic losses,” he stressed.
One of the greenhouse crops damaged by hail in El Ejido
“It looked like a horror movie”
El Ejido concentrates the largest area of greenhouses in the province of Almería with approximately 13,000 hectares, constituting the main economic engine. “We have exceeded the white nightyour heart sinks to the ground, the wind, the water then the hail, it destroyed everything,” explains a farmer who lost his harvest weeks before starting the harvest.
“The plastic is full of holes, the fruit is on the ground, it takes work, big losses because everything was new. The factories are overturned, we are trying to save everything we can. This happened to us many years ago, we have the goods insured but we don’t know what it will cover,” he adds.
Affected farmers are now struggling to replace fallen greenhouses, as well as damaged plastic after hail tore the covers. According to the estimates of the Ejidense municipal councilor, this will require an investment of at least one euro per square meter. “The problem now is how to replace these plastics. There won’t be enough crews“, considered Góngora.
Another farmer in the hail-hit area was left without the zucchini crop he just transplanted into the greenhouse. “In twenty years, this is the first time this has happened to me, now you have to start from scratchchange the plastic and replant. The first thing I did this morning was to call the seedbed because we have to move forward, there is no other option,” he says.
“It looked like a horror movie, I couldn’t get out of the car Because it was killing me, a big hail fell on me and it turned into a mess. I noticed how loud it was, as far as possible nothing happened to me, but what happened was very hard,” explains a young woman who was caught by the storm while that she was going home.
The Ejido is now working to record each of these losses before the possibility of requesting the declaration of severely affected area in order to obtain assistance that helps mitigate the damage caused by DANA for many families and farmers. The municipality of Ejidense has provided residents with an online mailbox so that they can report the damage suffered.
