As nine days have passed since the worst DANA of the century, which claimed the lives of 211 people only in the province of Valencia, according to the latest official data from the Generalitat, there are still dozens and dozens of people missing.
Rescue teams assigned to the most affected area continue to work intensively in the ravine beds and in the Albufera of Valencia in search of people. There is no official list of missing persons and the command post of the Generalitat Valenciana No estimate was given this week..
Only the figure provided by the Valencian courts is known with information obtained from the Civil Guard and the National Police. Officially, more than 90 people are still missing, but it is estimated that there could be many more.
Behind these figures hide dozens of desperate families, who have lost everything and who tirelessly search for their friends or family. They feel abandoned and humiliated by administrations and it is the friends of the victims themselves who organize themselves into groups to find their loved ones in the midst of so much destruction.
This is the case of Yolandea Valencian who lost likeOr brother Jorge, his sister-in-law Raquel and his nephew Neizan, 5 years old.
On the afternoon of October 29, Jorge and his wife went to the municipality of Aldaïaone of the hardest hit by the flooding caused by DANA, to pick up his son from school.
“There was no warning or information. It wasn’t raining and it was hot. The only alarm we received was at eight in the afternoon on our cell phone.“, Yolanda now recalls in a conversation with EL ESPAÑOL.
Apparently, while returning home to the urbanization area Calicanth of Torrent, were carried away by the force of water and mud.
“They went home and never arrived. A waterspout swept the car away and they found themselves in the ravine.like many other people who have not yet appeared.
Jorge in an image provided by the family.
According to his sister, “around eight o’clock in the afternoon, the alarm went off and we got worried. But we didn’t give it any importance, we thought there was nothing no danger for them.”
“Also, since communications were cut off in Torrent and everything was a disaster, We consoled ourselves and thought they had no cover“, he adds.
Jorge had another daughter, around 18 years old, who was left home alone that night and was unable to contact her family. “I went to Aldaia to help a friend who lost everything. At one point my phone started ringing a lot and suddenly I saw the missing person poster with the photo of my brother and his family. I passed out.”
“They took me out and since that day I’ve been living in a nightmare. They took genetic samples from me and told me there were more than 1,000 people missing, that there was nothing they could do,” Yolanda said.
The days passed until Jorge’s friends could no longer bear so much helplessness because “no one was following them.”
“His friends raideddisobeying all orders, and found the car in a ravine. It was empty and among some bushes they saw my brother’s arm and identified him by his tattoo. His friends found him. No one could touch him, they just covered him with a blanket and waited for the police to arrive.” But there was no trace of his wife or small child.
From this moment, a crossroads of comings and goings begins until the Valencia City of Justice and Valencia Fairthe morgue authorized by the Generalitat to house the bodies.
“My sister-in-law and my nephew must be in the same ravine. We have already buried my brother and, even if they denounce us, we will still go out looking for Raquel and Neizan.”
Yolanda ensures that families feel “humiliated, abandoned, in shit“. He says that they still do not know the result of the autopsy and that they handed over his brother’s body “sealed”.
“If I could address the administrations, the first thing I would tell them is where the organization and the alarms are. Why did they let so many people go to work and not raise the alarm sooner?“, he laments.
Management of missing persons
The SOS Desaparecidos association continues to manage the complaints it receives. Their social networks are full of photos of people of all ages about whom we know nothing. And they are just a “drop in the ocean”, in the words of Joaquin Amillspresident of the association.
Amills explained to EL ESPAÑOL that since Tuesday of last week they have received 3,000 reviewsbetween phone calls, emails, WhatsApp messages or comments on social networks.
After checking and filtering to avoid duplicate information, they keep 50 or 60 active alerts. Some were deactivated because these people were found dead.
“Faced with the despair of the families, numerous calls told us that in the first days, it was impossible to reach the official telephone numbers,” he says.
After the uncertainty of the first hours, the Generalitat Valenciana launched a telephone service for family members, the 900 365 112.
However, according to Amills, the management of the missing “has been pure chaos”. In this sense, he denounces that there is no official number of missing people because “what worries the population is misinformation”.
