«I am Isabel. I live on San Roque de Paiporta street. “One more minute and I’ll drown.” Thus begins the story of this neighbor from one of the towns most affected by the DANA that has devastated the province of Valencia. In a matter of minutes, this woman explains, the force of the water broke the garage doors, filling the streets with cars and furniture moved by the floods. «I have seen drowned dead neighbors, two of them my friends. And I’ve had other experiences that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy if I had one,” he continues.
«In just 5 minutes the water reached my waist, which is how long it took my father, 83 years old, who has prostate cancer who has just received radiotherapy treatment, and me to try to put bags and boards at the door and “The water won’t get in,” he says. They managed to enter the house and tried to secure the doors with the furniture they had. “Result? Broken garage door. “We almost died and now all the furniture is in the middle of the street.”
The notices, the complaint, arrived late. He remembers the people who were crossing the bridge “since it was not raining” and they did not imagine “that in just a minute they would simply disappear, swept away by the water, some with their babies.” He also regrets that many people have died in their cars. “But above all, the majority are in flooded areas, like mine, in those streets where, since there are no official organizations, no banks, just people… well, hey, it doesn’t matter.”
Isabel warns of the state of the streets, “full of furniture and junk that, at any moment, if it doesn’t rain, can unleash a new tragedy.” He can’t even cry, he says, although not for lack of desire, but because he doesn’t have the strength to do so. The work they are doing to try to rebuild their homes leaves them physically and emotionally exhausted.
Even more so, when they feel abandoned by the authorities. «Please, we need to clear these streets of junk. Our lives are in danger and the authorities do not pay attention to us. I talk to those at the UME and they tell me that it is not their responsibility. The local police say they can’t do anything,” he complains. »It’s something to cry about, isn’t it?«, he continues after highlighting that it is the neighbors and their friends who have traveled from other locations to help with these tasks.
«112. What is that? All the help we have received has been through civil volunteering,” says Isabel, who also criticizes the fact that volunteers have been asked not to collapse the roads. “The police are not letting into the town people who come to help us by bringing water and essential food that they have paid with money from their own pockets to collaborate,” he cries.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find tomorrow.”
This resident of Paiporta says that all the neighbors and people from other municipalities have been drawing water from the houses and streets for days. «We don’t know what we are going to find tomorrow when it dawns. Yes again, we will have to start over because the authorities, the Army or whoever corresponds are not helping us clear the streets of objects.
“I wish you with all my heart that you never have to experience a tragedy like this in your life,” he concludes.
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