When I grow up, Karina will tell her son Eliam the journey with a happy ending that he had to follow until he came into the world. This is what the civil guards told her who were trying to reassure this 32-year-old mother, 40 weeks pregnant, by helping her leave Paiporta, at the first rays of the sun, on Wednesday October 31. Hours earlier, a historic flood had devastated the town where he had lived since arriving from Peru two years ago. Throughout the night, hundreds of people surprised by the storm were rescued by rescue teams.
“We live on the third floor. I looked outside and it looked apocalyptic. I heard people in the street and I couldn’t sleep. Around five thirty in the morning, I got ready. Everything was devastated. I came away very scared when I started having severe pain and contractions. The river had already gone down, but there was a way for it to come up again,” Karina told ABC. The troops could not access the Valencian municipality, which had become ground zero for DANA.
It was half past nine in the morning. Accompanied by her mother, who was visiting while awaiting delivery, she walked to the outskirts looking for the officers who had put them in a car. “I went out and saw the reality of the surrounding towns. “I was very nervous,” she said. There was no mobile coverage or way to get to La Fe by road, so she was transferred to a health center in Torrent. After checking that everything was fine and that she was only one centimeter dilated, she was referred to Valencia General Hospital. A trip that she had to make without her mother, by protocol, because she shared an ambulance with another woman.
Karina’s mother walked for hours, in chaos, looking for her daughter
“My mother walked for hours to the city”. A distance of around ten kilometers that has become eternal due to the collapse of communications. “He arrived at six in the afternoon, full of mud and cold. We walked on garbage while crossing all the destroyed cities. “We both had to buy shoes because our feet were wet,” she points out.
After being released by doctors and drinking a cup of chocolate, Karina was able to stay with friends in Valencia to rest. “I knew nothing about my husband and my other three-year-old son. They were incommunicado. It was horrible. Then I found out that they were able to go to Benetússer with a friend. There too, they were very affected, but at least in this house they had electricity and water,” he explains.
On Thursday, he went to La Fe for the appointment he had with the midwife. He had already expelled the mucus plug, but it was not yet time for Eliam to be born. His mother came back to Paiporta to tell him that everything was fine.
It was then that the health professional and the social worker came so that Karina could be referred to the Alqueria del Basket. The headquarters of the Valencia Basket quarry housed hundreds of people during the first moments of the emergency and also became a base for external army units moved to the province.
“I knew nothing about my husband and my three-year-old son. They were incommunicado. “It was horrible.”
As the hours passed, the young woman warned the volunteers – “wonderful people” – that the contractions were getting worse. The doctor there assessed her situation and quickly accompanied her to the hospital, where she was not left alone. After a long wait, Saturday at 6:34 a.m., Karina gave birth. The father was able to hold the baby the next day and the grandmother had to wait until Monday to meet her new grandson. But for the moment, the brothers still don’t know each other.
While waiting for the final reunion of the family, Eliam and his mother will live with a friend in Riba-roja de Túria until the situation improves in Paiporta. “I miss them a lot. I haven’t seen my oldest son in a week. They helped me with everything here. We have no family in Spain and I have met many angels on this path. “I will never be able to thank you for so much solidarity,” she said enthusiastically. The Valencia Basket team, very attentive to the woman, has already contacted the family to invite them to a match when everything returns to normal.
