From a street corner in the San Isidro neighborhood, at the entrance to the town of Utiel, while the noise of machines and tractors drowns out the voices of neighbors giving each other instructions, suddenly a refrain of “ Happy birthday “. María Cabrerizo celebrates her 25th birthday today and those who sing are her friends for life. With them, he left his town, Puerto de Sagunto, early this morning to arrive here, armed with boots and rakes.
“Twelve of us came in three cars, and one of them even stopped us shortly before we got to town. “We decided to come when Sara told us what the situation was on the WhatsApp group that we have,” she says, sitting on one of the steps of the staircase that leads to the entrance of the house that belongs to her friend’s family and in which her aunt, Araceli Colom, continues to live with her daughter Gema.
She is surrounded by her friends, who are resting for a while after spending the day removing mud with brooms and shovels, as well as hundreds of volunteers who came from the rest of the country to Utiel this Saturday. Around 500 people did it alone, in private cars and vans, always parked at the entrance to the town, near a hotel and a gas station that had become the meeting point for those who came to help. Dozens more arrived in five buses that left Valencia the first morning.
“We did what the neighbors told us,” says María, almost as if to minimize the help they were able to offer us. As he speaks, Sara, his friend, appears through the main door of the house with her aunt Araceli. “On Tuesday I was at home and my daughter managed to come home from work. The river was going down with a lot of current, it was exaggerated. We first thought of saving the car and took it to the highest area of the city. And it was back, and I saw the water rising and rising. Around 2 p.m., we were already up to our ankles and by 6 p.m., we had already covered the stairs,” says the woman. They waited to be rescued, watching the walls fall. At nine o’clock in the evening, a tractor with a shovel rescued them. “At two in the morning there was another flood but we were no longer there.”
They came home Thursday afternoon with a group of their daughter’s young friends who began helping them empty the basement. The partitions that separated the rooms and the wall that separated his house from that of the neighbors no longer exist. The ceiling is covered with remains of earth and nothing of their belongings remains.
“We used the lower part as a summer residence. I separated recently and there I still had all my things stored in boxes,” he explains, pointing to a corner of the room that was already completely empty.
“If those kids hadn’t been there, I don’t know what we would have done,” she says, surrounded by the group of friends of her niece Sara, who spent so many summers and so many winter holidays here. “This is our family’s house, even though I live here, it belongs to three of us: mine and my two brothers. And on this staircase where you see us now, that’s where we spend the day when we all get together,” he adds.
“It was a shock for us to arrive and see this. In Puerto de Sagunto, nothing happened and for about twenty minutes everything happened like this. It’s the shock and uncertainty of thinking about how everything will be resolved. Arriving here was a reality shock, realizing that there are people who have found themselves homeless and lost family members. It’s also a feeling of helplessness and abandonment,” explains María Fernández, the second of the four Marías in the gang, who arrived from Puerto de Sagunto.
He feels doubly sad these days, because his grandfather, who died a few years ago, was from Letur, in Castilla-La Mancha, where the search continues to find the five missing after Tuesday’s floods. At his side is Monica, the mother of two other friends of the gang, who joined the mission with her husband. “It’s an honor to see you. The point of view of young people today does not do them justice. They are united, noble, generous,” he comments.
Juan Garvía is 36 years old and works in a real estate agency in Madrid, his city. On Friday he took his car and stayed here alone. “Then I convinced 15 others, who came today with four cars. There are also friends from Las Palmas who were in Madrid. What I don’t understand is that politicians say that we shouldn’t come and help because there is a real need for help here, in all the municipalities. Whether it’s with a shovel or two hands, it’s necessary,” he says.
He stays until this Sunday before returning to work on Monday. Around them, the coming and going of small trucks and tractors interrupts for a few seconds the work of the volunteers who, in teams of 8 or 10 people, all bend their backs in one piece to clean the mud with big brooms.
They worked in t-shirts that sunny Saturday, with muddy pants and boots up to their knees, their arms, hands and hair splattered with mud, amid shouts and smiles of encouragement. A few meters away, the Magro River flows in its channel with a few centimeters of water, as if all its strength had been exhausted that Tuesday evening when the rain that fell for hours transformed it into a tide that flooded the valleys. -bottom and then continued to rise. . on the first floor of houses on Alameda Street, in the La Fuente neighborhood, most affected by the flood.
In one of these houses, on the first floor, Andrés García’s family took refuge – his 95-year-old mother, his sister, his brother-in-law and their two children in their thirties – when they saw that the water level continued to rise. “I live in Requena, but I was here, in the office of the Provincial Deputation of Valencia where I work. It was raining a lot and when it was time to leave I couldn’t go home and stayed. My niece was scared to death, she called me to tell me the water was rising. They had somehow taken my mother, who had reduced mobility, to the first floor. And they stayed there all night, in the dark, until the water calmed and the EMU could rescue them the next day,” says García, leaning against the gate at the entrance to the house. The adjacent house is cordoned off like the four others which remain until the beginning of the street. The elderly woman who lived on the ground floor of the first is one of the six victims caused by DANA in Utiel.
Walking the streets leading to the center, from time to time, a boot soaked in red earth appears abandoned on a shoulder or a pair of work gloves resting on a window sill. At the social center for the elderly, located behind the church and the main square of Utiel, an aid distribution point and a shelter have been set up to accommodate volunteers in rooms equipped with mats and blankets. “People came here. Today you see the army,” says Araceli Colom.
“At the end of the day, I’m privileged. On the upper floor, where the dining room and kitchen are located, the water came within three hands of my hand. But on the second floor, where I have the rooms, it didn’t affect me, and I have clothes and everything. But many people have lost everything. And after the help and solidarity of citizens, we must come with help from the State,” he adds before hugging his niece’s friends who return to Puerto de Sagunto before sunset .
