Pedro Aldana flies over the apocalypse that DANA left behind during his visit to Valencia, since half past eight in the morning this Tuesday, when the torrential rain began to claim the lives of more than 60 innocent people. “We provide many services,” emphasizes Pedro Aldana, a 33-year-old mountain rescue doctor, mobilized aboard one of the firefighters’ rescue helicopters.
[Imágenes de la DANA en Valencia, Albacete y Andalucía: inundaciones, rescates, coches atrapados…]
“I think we must now exceed forty services“, as calculated by this doctor from Alfa 92 Xátiva, admitting in a telephone conversation with EL ESPAÑOL that it is not clear about the number of interventions, since it exceeds 29 hours of uninterrupted work.
“We carry out non-stop extractions in all municipalities in the Ribera Alta and Baja region of Valencia“, according to this 32-year-old doctor, while warning the journalist that he will only be able to take care of him until the next alert and they leave. The priority now is to save lives.
The most paradoxical thing is that Pedro and his team also They risk their lives with every flight. In fact, this doctor publishes several videos in this newspaper and in some of them you can see how they flew with the helicopter during the storm with the risk that flying in such adverse weather conditions entails.
One of the fire rescue helicopters flying over DANA’s “ground zero” in Valencia.
“I have been practicing medicine for several years and have never experienced anything like this.“, as this mountain rescue doctor admits. “We had to intervene on several occasions exit“, laments Dr. Pedro Aldana, using the clinical term that doctors use to refer to the death of a patient. Unfortunately, as the hours pass, the number of deaths in Valencia continues to increase, 62 deaths have already been recorded, But the worst part is that there are still people missing.
– What type of services have you had to perform since Tuesday?
-Pedro Aldana: Extractions of neighbors trapped because their homes were flooded by water. The people rescued were the elderly, patients with chronic pathologies of all kinds or people who had suffered injuries due to the damage caused by the storm.
– Can you give an example?
– One of the people rescued suffered a semi-amputation of a limb.
At this time, the work carried out from the air by rescue teams mobilized in fire, emergency or Civil Guard helicopters is crucial, because many roads are closed, preventing access to populations where precipitation exceed 200 liters per liter. square meter.
The Dantesque panorama that DANA left in Utiel, where it is located overflowed the Magro River, the center of Chiva completely flooded, the bridge burst by the flood in the town of Picanya… “It is difficult to specify what the ‘zero zone’ of the storm is”, specifies this doctor. DANA even caused tornadoes that forced pedestrians to run and drivers to stop and take shelter at a Repsol gas station.
A tornado in the Valencia metropolitan area forces people to take shelter at a gas station.
Doctor Pedro Aldana’s work with the firefighters requires maximum coordination because each rescue becomes a risky maneuversince it is necessary to make descents several meters high, through a guide line, before approaching the victims to anchor them safely to the cable and lift them to the aircraft.
This doctor in his thirties accepts the risk and does not hesitate with each service because his work is professional: “I studied medicine because I always wanted to practice this profession, since I was a child. “
