If the desperation and confusion can be read on the faces of each of those affected, in the case of the relatives of victims or missing persons the damage is superlative. Incommunicado, on most occasions, it is not easy for them to report their loss and for someone to give them instructions for the next steps that allow them to reunite with those they have lost, even if it is only their lifeless body.
It is true that since Wednesday a free telephone number for attention and information was enabled (900505550) but users complain that it is not easy to contact it. «We have called the phones [de desaparecidos]”They don’t catch them, they don’t inform you of anything, we understand that they are saturated, but it is desperate,” explains Rosa to ABC, who since Tuesday has been searching for her brother, who disappeared in the ravine in Cheste, on a tireless pilgrimage through hospitals, police stations, courts and morgues.
The in-person option is not easy either. To begin with, the Ministry of Justice and Interior of the Generalitat Valenciana has asked the relatives of victims and missing persons “not to go to the City of Justice of Valencia [a donde son llevados los cadáveres para realizar la autopsia]because they will not be able to receive adequate attention and information from forensic personnel.
A recommendation that also extends to the pavilion of the Valencia Fair where the corpses rest in trucks stored twenty by twenty in the cold rooms of several trucks. This is where Rosa has moved, again for a fruitless management. “They tell us to wait, and that they will contact us, but that is frustrating,” he laments.
The other option for relatives of missing persons is to report in person, but they have not made it easy for them here either. Contrary to what common sense might dictate, a centralized office has not been established to report the disappearance, but those affected are asked to go to the Civil Guard Headquarters, on Calamocha Street in Valencia, or to the Headquarters. Superior of the Police Corps, on Gran Vía Fernando el Católico depending on the district to which his town belongs. «The second case corresponds to people with National Police Corps stations in their municipalities; and in the first, to the rest,” explains the Ministry.
And all of this “only if the security conditions are appropriate for travel,” the note states. A euphemism that hides the almost impossibility of the complaint being filed, unless the relative of the missing person resides in Valencia city. It must be remembered that access to Valencia from the affected towns is closed to any type of traffic and that the authorities have asked that movement on foot be restricted as well. Furthermore, for complaints to be effective, they require that a direct relative of the deceased appear.
Given this, the solution applied by the Civil Guard has been to establish an office to care for relatives of missing persons in some of the affected towns, through the so-called “advanced command post.” In some places like Paiporta, the most affected, the office has been installed in the Municipal Auditorium.
Ante mortem protocol
Once the families manage to formalize the report, the Civil Guard begins the so-called ‘ante mortem’ protocol, which consists of requesting all the physical and personal information of the missing person, so as to allow a first identification if the body is located. . Thus, they are asked about their physical characteristics, possible marks, tattoos, piercings or identifying scars. In addition, it is completed with data such as the last place he was seen, the clothes he was wearing and the jewelry or ornaments he was wearing at the time of his disappearance.
They are also asked for a current photograph and complete identity, along with a sample of the family member that allows genetic comparison to be carried out, guaranteeing the most complete identification. The DNA requirement is contemplated within the protocol for catastrophes with multiple victims, which in this case was activated on the same Tuesday night, when it began to be known that the death toll was going to far exceed the established minimum of five.
From there, as in Rosa’s case, all we have to do is wait. And despair. «The only thing they have asked us for has been DNA samples from my father and brother so that later, if unfortunately whatever happens happens, we are going to hope not, [un complejo circunloquio para evitar la palabra que no quiere pronunciar] have biological evidence to identify the bodies, because the Police have told us that we have to wait for this to normalize because many more bodies are going to emerge,” he concludes.
#Chaos #desperation #pilgrimage #families #searching #missing
