On October 29, Utiel – a town of 12,000 inhabitants culturally closer to La Mancha than to Valencia – suffered not one, but two floods due to DANA which devastated half of the town. A waterspout came from the mountains and crossed the town’s main road, which is on a slope. From the lower part, through the ravine of the Magro River, a tongue of mud arrived that devastated the entire riverside neighborhood, with one or two-story houses and inhabited by many elderly people. Six neighbors died and 300 houses were destroyed.
As in Horta Sud, they remained without electricity, water and telephone for hours. But Utiel has a lot of upside in the rebuild. While in Paiporta or Catarroja the garages are still flooded and cars and belongings piled up in many streets, with health precautions and rubber boots, in Utiel you can already see white sneakers and half heels. Fruit markets. Bars. Strollers and shopping carts for children.
The flooded neighborhood, next to the avenue where the festivals take place, is today a sunny ghost town. Those who lived there left, although they left the doors and windows open to let in a pungent smell of humidity that penetrated the graves and bones within minutes. “Are you gas?” María Rosa is in her seventies and today she went to what was her house to receive the technician from the Generalitat, who goes from house to house to assess the damage. In Utiel, we are already in the paperwork and help phase. She and her husband were saved because their house is wall to wall with the Civil Guard barracks. “We climbed up on this roof with this ladder and shouted ‘help’ across the shared patio, and they came and got us. “They gave us dry clothes and we spent the night in the barracks. »
Today he surveys his house, where what little remains is stored. “Let’s see what they give us.” For the moment, and after a few days with her sister, they went to a hostel: “Everyone wants to help us and house us, a few days is good, but everyone has to live their own life”, explains this teacher to retirement. .
There is now a housing emergency, confirms the mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón (PP), for all those who have lost their housing and are currently looking for accommodation with friends and family members. Walking with Gabaldón through the city means stopping to say hello at every step. “Thank God you closed the institute, otherwise, what a shame,” says a worker who cleans the planters that overlook the devastated neighborhood.
That day no longer happened because at seven in the morning the mayor ordered the educational centers to close: “I discovered that there were some roads in difficulty, it was raining a lot and I said ‘either we close now or we can’ This is no longer the case.'” The high school is 20 hands from the river which overflowed. The ground floor is cordoned off and tables and chairs are piled up where the water reaches. A group of workers and tractor drivers replace the students and talk about tasks where before there was shouting and life.
In addition to the foresight of the authorities, the Utileans had an advantage in their favor in the worst DANA of the century: in Utiel it rained, and hard, all day. Faced with the persistent downpour and without schools, many residents took precautions; many fewer cars were on the road. Those who could stayed at home and did not go out. Many of them are elderly people with reduced mobility.
Utiel is also the first town where the Military Emergency Unit (UME) arrived, which has already been replaced by cleaning teams, electricians, tankers to clean the asphalt of Madrid or drain unblockers. sewers. “I called Minister Pradas and the Government Delegation in the morning and I asked the UME around one in the afternoon,” says Gabaldón, walking down the hill, pointing to the bar where he – even had to take refuge from the flood coming from the mountains. When the military arrived, they could no longer enter the town until the waters subsided. From there, cleaning, clearing mud, firefighters… The photo album of the nearly 70 municipalities swept away by mud.
How is it possible that at the same time Horta Sud or Chiva continue to have problems and that Utiel is on the path to reconstruction? Apart from the extent of the flooding (it wasn’t completely flooded) or the fact that in case of heavy rain one was more careful, the main thing is that it is an agricultural town – it has tractors and trucks – and it is small enough to accommodate enormous solidarity that emerges between neighbors. Carmen was one of the volunteers who prepared 500 hot meals on the street and brewed coffee for six days at a sidewalk stand. “The young people who came, who brought everything they had paid for with their own money, made me cry,” he said, unable to stop crying again.
But if there is a quorum in Utiel in anything, it is in the essential role played by the tractor drivers. With no firefighters or army in the first moments, and with the streets of the river zone under more than a meter of water, the tractors appeared. “They took people with shovels,” says Gabaldón, who estimates that with them and the helicopter they had, they saved around “60 or 70” people until seven in the afternoon, when night fell on the fateful day of 29 L. “Horta Sud de València, at that time, was experiencing its worst moment. In Utiel, they held their breath all night, until the waters had calmed and they went at dawn to assess the damage.
Tractor drivers then became essential again, they and the trucks, for the evacuation of all the remains left by the flood. Individuals, self-employed people or machines from agricultural and livestock companies who paraded there, alongside public services when they could get there, until it was passable. “Here we did almost everything ourselves,” agree the neighbors, who eternally thank the groups of young volunteers, this so-called glass generation that turned out to be steel.
Few memories of this horror remain visible, fortunately for the eyes and mental health. Just outside of town, on the opposite shore, is a dismal mud beach with upside-down vehicles. But in the center of the city, life goes on normally, with parents, children, grandparents in the sun, bakeries open and cars driving. The disaster is only revealed by a thin layer of sand that covers everything and by the balls of dry mud that remain scattered on the steps of every building.
The damage in the countryside in this rural economy remains to be assessed. Utiel is a wine producer and his luck is that the harvest ended in October and much of the process was completed. The winemaker of his cooperative, Vicente Ramos, says the damage will be significant: “Our cooperative members are farmers who bring their grapes here and we know that the flood has devastated many fields.” A hectare of vines is valued at around 10,000 euros, “and it must be said that it takes three years to be harvested”. Vicente was in the laboratory when he saw that a flood was passing through the city. They had to stay there until the situation calmed down. The water devastated the store, the wines floated. “They came to help us clean up the Iniesta Cooperative, they sent people even though we are in competition,” he says, grateful and excited. Engines and machinery have been rendered useless and the interior of all tanks damaged by mud will now have to be cleaned.
Meanwhile, at the Utiel Town Hall, there is a transfer of papers and data is recorded. “I will give you here those of the Generalitat and those of the State,” said an official to a woman whose basement was flooded. A man asks about Rosa, because even though he cleaned up her mess, she still has a finger of mud left and needs a truck. Everyone knows each other and encourages each other. The Internet is the spoken word. NGOs are the friends of the school. Chef José Andrés is a neighbor who was not affected by the water because he lived higher up. The EMUs were first the tractor drivers. In Utiel, when nothing worked, everything worked the old way. Today, where there was mud, there are trucks, technicians, cleaners and crews. “Utiel is not going to forget this,” one man says to another in the Plaza de la Puerta del Sol, but he is already looking for the exit door.
