From a street corner in the San Isidro neighborhood, at the entrance to the town of Utiel, while the noise of machines and tractors covers the voices of neighbors giving instructions to each other, suddenly a chorus is heard of “happy birthday”. María Cabrerizo turns 25 today and those who sing are her lifelong friends. With all of them he left his city, Puerto de Sagunto, early this morning to get here, armed with boots and rakes.
“Twelve of us came in three cars, and one even stopped us shortly before reaching the town. “We decided to come when Sara told us what the situation was on the WhatsApp group 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 His aunt, Araceli Colom, continues to live with her daughter Gema.
She is surrounded by her friends, who are resting for a while after having spent the day removing mud with brooms and shovels, as well as the hundreds of volunteers who traveled from the rest of the country to Utiel this Saturday. About 500 did it on their own, in private cars and vans, which are still parked at the entrance to the town, near a hotel and a gas station that have become the meeting point for those who have come to help. Dozens more have arrived in five buses that left Valencia first morning.
“We have done what the neighbors told us,” says María, almost as if downplaying the help they have been able to offer. While 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 back from work. The river was going down with a lot of current, exaggerated. First we thought about saving the car and we took it to the highest area of the town. And it was back, and seeing the water rising and rising. Around two o’clock, it was already up to our ankles and by six in the afternoon we already had the stairs covered,” says the woman. They were waiting to be rescued, watching the walls fall. At nine at night a tractor with a shovel rescued them. “At two in the morning there was another flood but we were no longer here.”
They returned to the house on Thursday afternoon with a group of young friends of their daughter who began to help them empty the basement. The partitions that separated the rooms and the wall that divided his house from that of the neighbors no longer exist. The ceiling is covered with remains of earth and nothing remains of their belongings.
“We used the lower part as a summer home. I recently separated and there I had all my things still stored in boxes,” he explains, indicating a corner of the already completely empty room.
“If these kids hadn’t been there, I don’t know how we would have done it,” she says, surrounded by the group of friends of her niece Sara, who has spent so many summers and so many winter parties here. “It is our family’s house, although I live here, it belongs to the three of us: mine and my two brothers. And on this staircase where you see us now is 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 has happened and for about twenty minutes everything was like this. It is shock and uncertainty thinking about how everything will be resolved. Arriving here has been a shock of reality, of realizing that there are people who have been left without homes and who have lost family members. It is a feeling of helplessness and abandonment as well,” says María Fernández, the second of the four Marías of the gang who has arrived from Puerto de Sagunto.
He feels doubly sad these days, because his grandfather, who died a few years ago, was originally from Letur, in Castilla-La Mancha, where the search continues for the five missing after Tuesday’s floods. At his side is Monica, the mother of two other friends of the gang, who has joined the mission with her husband. “It is an honor to see you. The view of young people today does not do them justice. They are supportive, 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, alone, stood here. “Then I convinced 15 more, who came today with four cars. There are also some 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 help is really needed here in all the municipalities. Whether it’s 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 as one to clean the mud with large brooms.
They worked in t-shirts this sunny Saturday, with pants and boots muddy up to their knees, arms, hands and hair splashed with mud, amidst shouts and smiles of encouragement. A few meters away, the Magro River runs through its channel with a few centimeters of water, as if all its strength had been exhausted that Tuesday night when the rain that fell for hours turned it into a tide that flooded the shallows and then continued rising. to the first floor of the houses on Alameda Street, in the La Fuente neighborhood, the one most affected by the flood.
In one of those houses, on the first floor, Andrés García’s family took refuge—his 95-year-old mother, his sister, his brother-in-law, with their two children in their thirties—when they saw that the water level did not stop rising. “I live in Requena, but I was here in the Valencia Provincial Council office where I work. It was raining heavily and when it was time to leave, I couldn’t go back to my house and I stayed. My niece was scared to death, she called me to tell me that the water was rising. They had taken my mother, who has reduced mobility, as best they could, to the first floor. And they were there all night, in the dark, until the water subsided and the UME was able to rescue them the next day,” says García, leaning against the gate at the entrance of the house. The adjacent house is sealed off like the other four that remain until the beginning of the street. The elderly woman who lived on the ground floor of the first one is one of the six victims that DANA caused in Utiel.
Walking through the streets that lead to the center, from time to time a boot soaked in red dirt appears abandoned on a shoulder or a pair of work gloves resting on a window sill. In the social center for the elderly, which is behind the Church and the main square of Utiel, an aid distribution point and a shelter have been established to welcome volunteers in rooms equipped with mats and blankets. “Here people have turned out. You are seeing the army today,” says Araceli Colom.
“I, at the end of the day, am privileged. On the upper floor, where I have the dining room and kitchen, the water entered three hand’s length from my hand. But, on the second floor, where I have the rooms, it hasn’t touched me, and I have clothes and things. But there are many people who have lost everything. And after citizen help and solidarity, help from the State has to come,” he adds, before hugging his niece’s friends who are heading back to Puerto de Sagunto before the sun goes down.
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