On the other end of the line, in a broken voice, he answers Maribel Albalatmayor of Paiporta. “Emergency crews continue to work overtime. We are in the coordination center that we have set up to try to be helpful in any way possible. For now, all I can think about is helping , it will be time to let go of the tearsAlready”.
In any disaster, there is always an epicenter, a ground zero. And this symbol is currently Paiporta, a municipality of 25,000 inhabitants south of Valencia, where at least 45 people of the more than a hundred deaths expected by DANA.
At the end of this Wednesday, 92 people lost their lives in the Valencian Community, one in the province of Albacete, another in Cuenca and another in Malaga. The missing, however, number in the dozens, which is why the emergency services assume that the balance will continue to increase.
Of these 45 deaths in Paiporta, six were recorded in a retirement home. Tuesday evening, water rushed into the building and swept away everything in its path.
“We could never have imagined something like this. The streets are washed away, flooded houses have disappeared and the image I see on the faces of my neighbors is one of the desolation” said the mayor.
The media coverage is as broken as his voice, as this city and others had to live without power for much of the day after the disaster. In total, some 115,000 people suffered from power cutsthen the mayor asks “those who are still at home to stay there, to hold on and share shopping with their neighbors. »
Adjectives in episodes like these tend to be hyperbolic. But the images of people perched wherever they could, the helicopter rescues of the emergency services, the cars piled up like in a scrap cemetery or the aerial images of the Police justify more than ever to speak of a apocalyptic scenario.
DANA victims in the east of the peninsula
This is the worst DANA of history in Spain. At least since there are records, at least so that they can be quantified – in past episodes, it was impossible to have an exact toll of victims – and at least in human termsThat’s what matters right now.
The rains devastated some areas of Albacete and then concentrated in the south, but the most affected area was undoubtedly the province of Valencia.
Like a whole year
This Tuesday, they fell at certain points close to 500 liters per square meter, an amount that could accumulate during a rainy year. The red alert was activated, but the storm exceeded all forecasts.
In addition, although the Generalitat recommended from the beginning not to use the vehicle, it only sent messages to citizens’ cell phones until eight o’clock in the afternoonwhen many people were already stuck at their workplace or on the road.
More than a thousand people remained stranded this Wednesday on the A-3 and the A-7, the Government having not previously cut the roads.
“It’s the worst moment of my life as mayor. I’m 63 years old and I don’t remember anything similar,” he also emphasizes on the phone. André Salomfirst mayor of L’Alcúdia.
The Valencian Community has a long history of tragedies linked to the cold drop, but neither the flood of 1957, nor the rupture of the Tous dam in 1982, nor the floods of 1987 reached this extreme.
In L’Alcúdia, 30 kilometers south of Paiporta, there is also a truck driver who disappeared while getting out of his vehicle when the river was already overflowing. And an elderly woman died with her daughter due to the flood.
“There was a sinkhole in this woman’s house, so it’s possible she died drowned. And when his daughter went to see what happened, she had a heart attack and also died. I went to the house with the judicial police and it was all muddy. It’s very hard, traumatic“, insists the mayor, who was informed of the waterspout which fell on another councilor in the sector.
Some of these mayors have already raised their voices about the delays in notifications from emergency services, dependent on the Autonomous Administration. But the urgency, for now, remains to search for those missing in the mud and to try to get a more complete picture of the disaster.
Material damage
Because the number of deaths will, very predictably, increase. The authorities are working with even worse forecasts than the current ones.
Right after this moment of shock It will also be time to take stock of the damage. Lucía Menéndez Aguirre de Cárcerdirector of the Aguirre & Baeza firm and expert in expertise, assures that “it is difficult to determine the amount now, when almost 24 hours have not passed, but the damage will be very high”.
In other significant episodes of DANA, such as in 2019, “material damage reached 425 million euros in the region”, he continues. It is therefore very likely that this figure greatly exceeds this amount.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezpromised in an institutional declaration to put “all State resources” within the reach of victims, “and if necessary, of the EU”. And the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyengot the message by expressing solidarity and offering “support for the emergency”.
The Valencian president, Carlos Mazonreported last night that the number of calls to the missing persons hotline set up for citizens to alert people showing no signs of life had been significantly reduced. He also concluded the air rescues. “There is no longer anyone to rescue visible from the air,” he said.
More than 10,000 rail travelers have been affected, rail traffic between Valencia and Madrid or the connection with Barcelona will not be restored at least until next Sunday.
Paiporta, this Valencian town where most of the deceased are concentrated, represents rather a small icon of the catastrophe. Images of the worst DANA in the history of Spain, which has not yet left the peninsulahit an entire country which declared the next three days of official mourning.
