“The State has abandoned us”

The scenario surrounding their remarks proves them entirely right. Four square kilometers which are an open-air cage, with businesses completely destroyed, houses and garages flooded, thousands of useless cars and dozens of deaths. The question that comes up most often in conversations, between exclamation points, is that of what exactly happened And Why didn’t anyone tell them anything? There is not a single neighbor who does not report what he considers to be negligence on the part of the authorities.

In just a few minutes, traces of the worst DANA of the century They treacherously destroyed this town, which until now was presented as a quiet place on the outskirts of Valencia. “We received the emergency alert two and a half hours after everything happened, when the water was already up to our chests”Raquel said, right after saying she was about to die in her house. Once again, this is not hyperbole: his house, a first floor, is destroyed, full of mud, with partitions on the floors. He escaped through a rear fence with the help of his first-floor neighbor.

“They left us stranded”

That neighborhood cooperation It’s the only thing left in a city where he rules the absence of public power: “The State has abandoned us”, he says Manualof 65 years old. “No one has promised us help and we don’t hope for it. They have already devastated the two main supermarkets, people have taken absolutely everything,” he continues. A few moments later, there began to be struggles for water distribution. The inhabitants, without vehicles – completely destroyed -, without water and with a perimeter of two kilometers closed, depend on foreigners to supply themselves with water and food.

The city’s largest supermarket remains devastated and its doors are open. “I’m trying to find some canned goods and water.”said Anton, who makes his way through the mud with the flashlight of his cell phone. He’s out of luck. There’s practically nothing left. Beneath the darkness of the enclosure there is only the humidity of the flood and the despair of others. 15 people which they are also looking for.

“They left us stranded, let’s make it clear so everyone knows”Some neighbors scream when they see the cameras. HE SPANISH. The truth is that the police who are present in the city trying to manage what is already considered an unprecedented disaster are unable to establish a clear line of help: “We don’t know if the military will arrive, if the EMU will be able to accomplish these tasks…”said an agent.

Many will have no choice but to leave. Although No to want. “They just cut off our gas,” he says Anthonyfrom the first line of the street. “So we can’t cook,” he continues. He walks with a suitcase with which he almost slipped in the mud. “I wouldn’t leave the house but right across the street, my neighbors don’t have electricity and I happen to have electricity. “So I went to get their cell phones to charge them.”he explains, showing a bag containing five devices.

A few meters further, Adrian tries to get water from his house with a basin. “Come in, come in. It’s full of water,” he said. It’s a first floor, but the mud reaches the walls. The garage, like many others, has become a small tank in which several cars float. Hers, however, was saved: “My daughter and I went to Sagunto to pick up a new car that I was able to buy. They said the alert would end at 6:00 p.m. and we saw it for sure” , he said. . An hour later, disaster struck.

Dozens of deaths

It might seem that the images of Paiporta They correspond to a single street, which a few neighbors exploited with very little luck and which in reality is not that serious. But it’s not like that. There is not a single building against which the storm has not deployed all its fury and rage. As the kilometers pass, the scenes become worse than the previous ones. The gates of the buildings are completely destroyed.

Josep Capuz Street, Luis Martí Street, Plaza de Cervantes, the Municipal Auditorium… everything is a large pool of mud. “If we had known, we wouldn’t be here. We almost died,” says María. They learned of the increased flooding through the cries of some neighbors, but not through advance warning. In fact, most of them took the cars out of garages, thinking it would “a small flood, one of those that happens sometimes”.

When the troops of Unit Military of EMERGENCIES They began to deploy to Paiporta, many locals thought help would arrive then. But it was still early. At the edge of the ravine, firefighters, the Civil Guard and the UME continued to remove the lifeless bodies. And the funeral trucks continued to arrive in the Valencian city, the one which, just 10 kilometers away, is still known as “the city of the apocalypse”.

One of the neighbors stops a police car to ask for help. A person is trapped in a house, they have located them and need to get them out of the collapsed structure. “But is he alive?”asks the policeman. “Yes, yes, breathe!”they answer. “Sorry, at the moment we are only prioritizing the removal of corpses”sentence, just before continuing his approach, the agent. “We can’t take it anymore,” sighs the neighbor.

On one of the roads leading out of town, Jenny begin undertake an extremely important journey on foot: “My son is epileptic, we lost the house and also his medicines. In pharmacies, we are told that the laboratories have not replaced them,” she says. She is determined to walk to Torrent, an hour and twenty minutes away, so she can collect it. He also lost his car. “We have nothing left. I can’t lose it now.”