A group of local police officers have just met Jaco. He is a Belgian shepherd who has just arrived in Catarroja, joining the search efforts of the rest of the troops, because The missing in the Valencian Community number in the hundreds. Behind him and his owner, who has him tied up tightly while greeting the rest of the team, there is a gigantic garage, in which firefighters work with pumps to extract the water that has been there for a week.
—Is it to find corpses?
—No, this one looks for the living. The smell of death does not alert him, he is not trained for that.
The Camí Nou avenue, which connects the different towns of l’Horta Sud, is a coming and going of people, trucks and vans. As you advance south, from La Torre to Albal, the situation worsens, although today a greater military presence is noticeable. The map changes day by day, because where yesterday a street was cleartoday a pile of cars or debris appears that have been removed from other locations, where neighbors and volunteers had previously deposited them. This causes jams and delays in the machinery involved in the evacuation tasks themselves. Coordination is complex, as troops come from all over Spanish territory, and they do not seem to know the place in depth.
Military cleans a street in Benetúser, in the province of Valencia
Brigades of the Army and Air Force try to clean streets throughout the area, but There are neighbors who already have more experience and are faster. having overcome the shock days ago. “This is worse than a war zone, there is only destruction,” say troops who have been on missions in Lebanon or Senegal about a reality that the population of l’Horta Sud has been feeling firsthand for days.
—There are no neighbors on this street, there are others with the same dirt and with people in their houses.
-Yeah? We go where they send us, it will be so that the ambulances can pass.
The tasks they perform are of all kinds. On Monday, a woman gave birth in Paiporta. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 29, the day of the flood, she returned home, where she has been since then. Yesterday the military managed to move the seven-day-old child to the La Fe Hosiptal for a recognition to pass. Next to him, twelve other elderly men.
—Could you have come earlier?
—I can’t answer that.
From the expression on his face, this member of the Army seems to have the answer clear in his head.
The water flows again
The drainage of hundreds of garages continues throughout the region where, In many areas, the mud continues to reach knee height. In others, the neighbors, with the help of the different detachments, have begun to devise systems to bring stagnant water to the sewers that are not collapsed. Near Massanassa, several of them have planks with which to redirect the current.
After seven days, the water is flowing through the streets again, although, this time in a controlled way and without taking life ahead of hundreds of people. The Poyo ravine in Catarroja continues to carry a stream of water that the residents of the area had never seen at this time of year, something that helps to understand the dimension of the cold drop that it discharged on the province of Valencia.
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