“What will not be forgotten will be the movement of all Spaniards [tras la tragedia]”. The sentence is spoken Aitor Vilarino from the hospital. He was hospitalized for seven days due to a cut on his leg while helping his neighbors, affected like him by the DANA which hit Valencia a week ago. The infection is starting to subside and he wants to thank society and look to the future.
“It crossed nationalities and ideologies,” he said on the other end of the phone. “Everyone came and I would like all of Spain to see congratulated and rewarded for all this“, he insists. “They came to help the neighbors who were dying.”
This Basque citizen lives in Benetúser and suffered from DANA like all the inhabitants of his town. He remembers how he got that cut that still keeps him hospitalized and on antibiotics.
“I was at home with my father and my son and my wife was at Massanassa functioning. The area was filling with water and I called my partner to tell him not to come. People fell into the flood and died,” he explains.
His wife called him exaggerated, but he saw through the window how the water rose up to three meters. He lost contact with her, who was returning home. “I was crying and desperate,” he says. “The water was coming so hard that cars were plowing into my building.which overlooks an open field, and they managed to cross it. “When I saw that, I activated my survival instinct.”
The next few hours were spent in a continued search for what was best for him, his family and his community. He thought he should take his son, across the adjacent roofs, to buildings of newer construction to be safe from the flood and the blows of the vehicles it trailed.
“Me I went up to the roof with my father and my sonI broke a skylight and from there we saw how the water carried away the people in my neighborhood. It was a catastrophe, like the film The Impossible,” he explains to EL ESPAÑOL.
Images of the Benetúser neighborhood captured by Aitor Vilariño on the day of the flood.
Fortunately, he received a message from his wife at that moment. She takes refuge in the building of certain residents of the town. “People were screaming and It was like a horror movie“, he explains, but “as all of mine were fine, I said: I have to go out into the neighborhood to help people and try to get closer to where my wife was. “
Aitor, a personal trainer with great physical strength, made a backpack with tools to get out when the water had reduced its flow. “I took some tools and broke the ropes on my stand to put them in the backpack. A screwdriver, a glass breaker…”
His people being safe, he went out into the street. “I went all over the neighborhood to help people with other neighbors. We broke down the doors, we entered the basement“We looked car by car to see if there were people stuck…”
It was in one of these life-saving moments that he received the injury that now keeps him hospitalized. While walking down one of the streets full of water and mud, “I stuck my leg in and fell into a sewer.”
He was injured in the leg. “I ripped off my jacket“I tied a knot in my shin because it was bleeding horribly and I continued to help people,” he finishes explaining.
The storm has passed
Aitor Vilariño wishes to point out that they were held incommunicado for 24 hours. “Not a single policeman entered, an ambulance. The police prevented people from entering the neighborhoods, but no one entered the towns,” they say. “There was no water, there was nothing,” he remembers.
After 24 hours, Wednesday afternoon, the first ambulances arrived. And soon rumors began to speak of a new flood, a gas leak in the region…”It was a disaster“It’s like all the cities are disappearing.”
There, Vilariño and his family made another decision: to go to Valencia. “I’m not going to stay here waiting to die,” he told himself. “The problem is that I am very close to Valencia“But there are people in towns 30 km away who couldn’t do it on foot and didn’t have a car because the floods swept them away.”
48 hours have passed “without eating or sleeping”. “The survival instinct is so active…”
Meanwhile, his injury was getting worse. “He was infectedbecause they are fecal water bacteriadaily antibiotics they are not useful to stop it“. The pain was so bad from the infection that there were days when it left him “lame.” Even 150 milligrams of tramadol could not stop the pain.
Aitor’s leg with the injury.
His sister is a doctor and told him from day one to take amoxicillin, but after seeing the progress, three days later he told her to go to the emergency room. Once there, the doctors told him: “How are you now?”. The answer is obvious, he had other tasks.
The inflammation subsided when they injected him until 8 sachets of antibiotics. He recovered and was released. The problem is that then the amount increased again.
“The infection left me paralyzed, but I am getting back on track,” Aitor says now. If throughout this Monday he recovers and the latest tests indicate that he is well, he will return home on Tuesday. “I already said I didn’t want to leave until the infection disappears“He informed the doctors.
Look back and remember that even 150 milligrams of tramadol per day from day one did not take away “the pain.” “The blow was great and I went hours without sleeping. We therefore see the extent of the adrenaline,” he emphasizes.
Aitor, hospitalized for a week with a cut on his leg.
get up
Despite the hole in their building, the expert has already told Aitor and his family that they can live there. He He lost his car and his motorbikebut he had a piggy bank that he will now break to get his life back and not to achieve new goals. “The problem we have is not hardware“, he emphasizes.
The big problem is how to get Valencia and the surrounding towns back on their feet. “The problem is, where I shopped, where I drank coffee, where I worked out, the things you do are who you are. My neighborhood and all the miles that run through it surround are gone. Now how should I do it. I’m in Buñol: what should I do? who am I? You feel lost… Imagine that all the towns on the outskirts of Seville disappear. It’s the same.”
However, we still have to hope to rebuild Valencia. “Even with all of this, you know there is hope. I’m happy with the society I live in because I know people respond to these kinds of situations. I want people to be rewarded for that.”
