OKDIARIO immortalized the arrival of Military Emergency Unit (UME) at Bonaire Shopping Center, Aldaya. One of the largest in Spain and the largest in the entire province, with parking for 5,700 places of six plants which were covered up to street level. By the time alarms sounded about DANA flooding and patrons were told to evacuate, there were about 700 people inside. Work to extract all this quantity of water has already begun. Now the fear lies in what’s inside. “What we find out could be devastating“, says the city’s mayor, Guillermo Luján.
The UME troops arrived aboard vehicles equipped with aquatic means and water extraction motor pumps to begin the emptying work of this shopping center. Some facilities remained absolutely flooded.
It is one of the epicenters of the drama: the center of Bonaire was open when the alarm was triggered, on October 29. Inside, there are 120 establishments, some cinemas with several rooms and a large catering area. Most of the 700 customers who were inside at the time were shopping there. Alarms sounded and people were asked over loudspeakers to evacuate the center.
By then, the water had already poured out of the mouth of the parking lot. Bonairedescending its multiple floors. According to witnesses, many people headed to the parking lot to pick up their cars and leave from there.
Within minutes, the lower floors were completely flooded. The workers of the stores and hypermarketwho left some time after the customers, could no longer reach their vehicles. A security guard blocked their way, warning them that it was already a death trap.
What’s inside remains a chilling mystery for both rescuers and municipal authorities. The city’s mayor, Guillermo Luján, declared live on TVE that we must be “cautious”, but he recognized that “what we will find in Bonaire can be devastating“.
Cars and parking
Civil emergency services and EMU They have already managed to reach the areas most affected by the DANAlike Paiporta and Catarroja, and what they found there “frozen their blood”.». “It is a horror, much worse than we expected», says a Spanish soldier who worked in the Paiporta area. They suspect that given the bodies found, the death toll could rise considerably in the coming hours, above the current 202. The focus is on garages and under the mass of cars who blocks the streets.
Zero point of DANA It’s still an apocalyptic scenario covered in mud, branches and cars. Lots of cars. They constitute precisely the greatest obstacle that emergency services face in accessing these populations, the most affected by the uncontrolled torrent of water that poured into the river. Poyo Ravine carrying away everything in its path. Also at this moment, more than 200 lives.
But this figure is feared by the members of the UME with whom OKDIARO was able to speak. it’s going to be dramatically short in the hours and days to come. At least that’s what they conclude from their first day of work in the field.
The army set up its forward command post at the Paiporta gas station, from where it began its missions clear roads and bring water and supplies to neighbors in need. The second phase of their deployment this Friday consisted of finding missing. A word that gradually becomes assimilated to a harsh reality: the hope of surviving a flood diminishes drastically with each passing hour. During an earthquake, the trapped victim may remain for several days. But water is deadly. And they have already passed more than 72 hours since the water devastated Paiporta.
Attention is focused on the cars. Under them, rather. There are mountains of dozens of cars blocking the streets and we have to take them out one by one to check if there are bodies. AND “many go out», Say the military sources consulted. “It is no longer the high number of deaths that appears, which is much higher than what we expected in principle, but very often the state in which they are», They indicate. The mass of metal of the bodies, as well as the reeds and logs brought by the flood, became “a crusher” under the waters. This will make identification work difficult, they say.
