From the tragedy of the Campanar fire to the terror of Dana in the province of Valencia, only 250 days have passed. Between the anguish of losing everything and the despair of an uncertain future, solidarity and camaraderie find their way through improvised heroes and heroines, like the janitor Julián, who saved dozens of lives from the building on fire, and which is now being followed. Paula Michelenaa young woman from the town of Paiporta who with her Green Hope Jeep Wrangler He cleared various streets so neighbors could leave their homes.
He will never forget what he experienced, he believes. On the fateful Tuesday, he was already at home when he started receiving videos of the completely overflowing ravine. “We had no idea what was going to happen, we thought the water level was going to drop quickly,” explains the Salvadoran driver, who remembers very well.a tsunami with three meter waves» travel the roads of Paiporta. Fifteen minutes later, in different groups with people from the municipality, they began to guess the nature of the disaster and around eight in the afternoon, before the alert reached all cell phones, the current of murky water was already descending violently down their street. one way only.
On Via Porvenir, where he lives, the river level reaches one and a half meters. He violently entered the courtyard of the building but did not reach the first floor. “Everything was destroyed, full of mudand what saved us in this area was the Mercadona which is right next door”, he explains, since a large quantity of water accumulated in the garages of the large supermarket which relieved the rest of the road.
Once he woke up from a bad dream, he checked that his green Jeep was in good condition, he got to work and with ropes began to drag different vehicles that occupied the road, some upside down or in a hurry against the wall and others mounted on each. other, In this way, helping the work of the agents of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) displaced since Wednesday in the Valencian towns affected by Dana. “I did it to give them a hand, they can’t cope and those of us with big cars need to lend a hand,” says Paula.
Image taken from Paula’s car in Paiporta
The young woman explains that the mobilization of all-terrain vehicles is starting to be “huge” after her first life-saving intervention. Many of them arrived from other neighboring towns and from the city to Valencia, which the National Police and the Civil Guard allow to travel without any restrictions on the CV-400 so that they can enter to help eliminate the hundreds of useless cars and. rid the streets of a place that offers a post-apocalyptic appearance. Higinio, one of Paula’s neighbors, managed to leave Paiporta with his two children after two difficult days thanks, as the title of Izal’s song says, ‘the woman in green’which opened their way through the chaos.
A saving policy
A few meters away, at the intersection of Picanya and Sant Antoni streets, Leo never stops wondering how this tragedy happened. At the end of the 80s, ironically, he felt part of a “privileged generation” which experienced “a turn of a century, another of a millennium, Spain proclaimed itself world champion” and, finally, “a misfortune at your doorstep that I never thought I would live.” Lighting a cigarette, he becomes emotional as he gazes at the bar where he was drinking coffee minutes before the world collapsed.
He was “so calm” with his cut when he started hearing screams. He looked out the door of the establishment and saw people running, which scared him. At that point, he approached a local policeman, who warned him of the arrival of a raging river from the ravine and showed him the way home as his feet began to wet. “Without her, I wouldn’t be here. saved my life», celebrates Leo, who has not seen his son for four days, who lives in South Korea and who went to Valencia for the operation of his grandson, whom he has not yet seen . “I just want it to happen as quickly as possible and to be able to hug them,” the neighbor said.
