As Halloween night approaches, Letur is still immersed in her worst nightmare since Tuesday. The Virgen de la Asunción public school, the only one in this beautiful town of Albacete of 900 inhabitants, has become the forward command post and this column is written from a classroom desk. The teachers and children are not there, but the decoration that they prepared with so much enthusiasm for such an important date in the school calendar remains hanging. The date, October 29, 2024, is written on the board in Spanish and English. A fateful day for the history of the cradle where the singer Rozalén was born, devastated by this very hard blow.
“I’m afraid, the shock hasn’t passed yet,” said a compatriot with a cap to another person on the phone, 24 hours after the flood. He speaks while looking toward Ground Zero, at the gates of the Old City, which looks like a meteorite has fallen on it.
We only realize the catastrophe by immersing ourselves fully in it, because on the winding road which leads to the city, surrounded by lush vegetation, nothing suggests the horror. Anchored in the Sierra del Segura, it is a town declared a historic and artistic site since 1983, with one of the best preserved Islamic sites in the province.
In reality, the downpour was not the cause of the major tragedy in which, at the moment, it has been confirmed that a 92-year-old woman named Dolores died and there are five missing, even if it is not judged. outside there are more. It happened because “we are in an area of boulevards and here, in the Letur stream, the water collected in the surroundings has gathered,” laments Miguel. “It became a tsunami,” Katy sums up. Although there was a second flood around ten o’clock Tuesday evening, this is the first and terrible flood, that of one o’clock in the afternoon.
As in Fuenteovejuna, firefighters from the Civil Protection of the Provincial Delegation of Albacete, environmental agents, Infocam staff, Army soldiers and civil guards work together.
The man in the cap talks about the bridge that was blocked decades ago, as old people remember. And now the same thing happened, recalls Juan, a locksmith. “The water swept away the same house where Jony and Mónica were, the missing couple (around 30 years old) who went out onto the balcony and were dragged by the water,” he says. “The two children of Jony and Mónica were saved because they were at school and high school,” explains Miguel, an employee of an alarm company, next to him. Mónica, originally from Letur, had started working in the campsite swimming pool, while Jonathan was employed at the El Cantero cheese factory in Letur.
In the city, we also learned that the flood almost swept away the mayor, Sergio Marín, in his car. That he was driving and caught up with the vehicle behind him and when he looked in the rearview mirror, it had already disappeared.
Dolores, only confirmed death
As in Fuenteovejuna, Civil Protection, firefighters from the Provincial Delegation of Albacete, environmental agents, Infocam staff, the military and the civil guards work together, with the help of a helicopter, drones, divers and dogs. Rescuers have just rescued a man who had spent the night incommunicado at his home. This comes shortly after the body of Dolores, the only confirmed death, who lived in Mónica and Jonathan’s house next door, was found.
Antonia, who lived in a mill converted into a home, has also been wanted since Tuesday. And to Juan and Manolo, town hall employees, who were working when the flood swept away everything in its path. The first, aged around 34; the second is around 55 years old. Ascensión, Antonia’s friend since she was little, remembers that she asked her if she was afraid of staying at the mill at night. “He told me yes, but I didn’t dare tell him to go with another member of the family,” he reveals.
A group of young people, who returned to town to hear the news, gather near Ground Zero. One teenager said she slept “stuck, her nerves on edge,” and her friends complained that the riverbed was not clean. Another woman asks Pedro, from Civil Protection, to allow her to go to his house when possible to collect the oxygen machine from a man in her care and, in doing so, control his animals. “And don’t think it’s frivolous,” he adds.
* The column can be sent thanks to the Red Cross, which has set up a communication system with the code ‘Sheltered@’ so that the media, among others, can use Wi-Fi in a city plunged into sadness .
