The night of terror in the Bonaire shopping center: workers trapped sleeping in the cinema and surrounded by water

That Tuesday night when the catastrophe was beginning to take shape, the hundreds of afternoon shift workers of the dozens of shops and restaurants in the business complex could not return to their homes.

As always happens in these cases, between the intrinsic need to communicate of human beings, desperation and the impulse to shout to the world about what is happening, many of them They reported through social networks the nightmare they were living.

Fortunately, all of the center’s employees are well, as confirmed to ABC by direct sources from Bonairebut fear was his main companion on Tuesday night when the water flooded the entire ground floor and had completely covered the underground parking lot.

«I didn’t think that my work day today would end like this: having a little tub of pasta with donuts for dinner, taking turns with the charger and sleeping in the cinemas», wrote Paula on her X account from her work.

Indeed, the multiplex cinemas that Cinesa has in the fifth largest shopping center in Spain served as a refuge for all those who were left there with no way out.

Others, around 8:00 p.m., when the water was already beginning to take over everything, managed to access their cars and leavebut the scenes were beginning to be devastating as well as dangerous.

Center Decathlon clothing

The uncertainty was great, it was no longer raining but it was impossible to move. Everything was water, mud, products from all the stores sailing through that lake of mud. It is in those moments that we see the solidarity of those close to us, as another of the trapped workers, Mireia, details in her networks:

“Thank to the workers of the Decathlon of the Bonaire Shopping Center They spent the whole night trying to get us in to take shelter. When we managed to enter, they offered us clothes and shoes to stay dry and all the food and drink they had,” he writes, before closing his message with a forceful “I owe you my life.”

Five days after the disaster, the magnitude of the impact of the tragedy at the shopping center is still incalculable. The UME, the Police and the Firefighters work against the clock at the parking accesses underground to bail out water and finally gain access to see what scenario they find.

The hope is that, given the weather conditions on that Black Tuesday, The afternoon traffic was not very high on Bonaire. But the fear that there are victims who lost their lives trying to get their cars out of the parking lot is real and the new rains slow down the work. The night of terror in the shopping center has continued since Tuesday without reaching its dawn.