José Luiz Cambronero counts out loud. “Four, five, not six, with the lady over there. » These are the dead on your street. Their neighbors dragged, crushed, crushed, drowned by the wave of water, mud, wood, metals of all kinds, appliances, stones, concrete blocks, pieces of tar and cars that devastated the city of Paiporta (Spain), 25,000 inhabitants, on the night of Tuesday, October 29 to Wednesday, October 30, causing immense damage and killing at least 62 people in the town, or almost a third of the total victims recorded in the Valencian Community (155).
José Luiz Cambronero is 66 years old and has never experienced such a desperate situation. He himself escaped at the last second. He was with his daughter and his two grandchildren, ages 7 and 10. The water, which rose in a few minutes, blocked the doors of the houses from the outside. The adults of the family made a chain to carry the children, take them out the window and reach a neighbor’s window, a little higher. Those who had steel security doors on the ground floor were unable to leave. Nor are people who are too old, who abound in this town on the southern outskirts of Valencia.
The results are terrible at the municipal and agglomeration level. It is also provisional: on Thursday afternoon, bodies were still being removed from basements and garages, while authorities continued to register dozens of missing people. Some of them may have been washed out to sea.
But it is actually a miracle that the human damage has not been even greater. The violence of the flood caused by the exceptional rains upstream, the force of the waters falling from the hills, the height of the wave, which reached two meters throughout the city, could have swept away more people.
The inhabitants speak of acts of bravery and of all those lives that hung by a thread, a rope, an outstretched hand, an open door. Vicente Carrión, 35, another resident of this cursed street in this cursed city, was talking on the phone with his wife, who was driving their 6-year-old daughter. His car began to be dragged by the waves, Vicente ran, swam, holding on as best he could and reached the vehicle, broke a window, and took out his wife and daughter. They were able to take refuge in a building.
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