On the 3,000 square meters that Higiman’s warehouses occupy, in Picaña, boxes of gloves for hospitals are piled up along with packages of toilet paper rolls and bottles of hydroalcoholic gel. The same boxes of masks that supplied almost the entire Valencian Community during the pandemic, and that are now so necessary in the areas affected by DANA, accumulate at the street door along with bottles of detergents, bleaches and disposables, among other products, which Higiman – which closed last year with profits of 11 million euros – will not be able to sell to its customers. This chemical products company is located in Alquería de Moret, an industrial estate with 70 companies where no machine has arrived to clean the streets. The flood displaced the ambulances of the Diavida company, which were stuck in the mud at a crossroads in the industrial area. The vans of the food company Valin are also there. Along with their warehouse, others have suffered damage, such as that of Jamones de Aragon or Vendival.Related News standard No The first official data places the missing persons by DANA in Valencia at 89, although there are 62 unidentified bodies Alberto Caparrós The forensic experts have already carried out the autopsy of 195 bodies, of which 62 remain to be identified. The x-ray of this scenario extends through the twelve streets of Alquería de Moret, where the business owners try to help each other to get ahead. They also feel abandoned. Without help, even if it is to clean the streets, they will not be able to return to activity because no transport company will be able to enter the industrial estate to supply them with merchandise. “We have to start somewhere else until we can return,” María Álvarez, in charge of the company’s administration and finance area, explains to ABC. She and her brother Rafael, commercial director of Higiman, work tirelessly so that the company founded by Rafael Álvarez García-Casarrubio, her father, recovers its activity as soon as possible. They have not been invoiced for five days and have 30 payrolls to pay at the end of the month. Three of their employees are from Picaña and have lost their homes: “They can’t be out of work now too,” says María. Between the two brothers, thanks to a friend, they have managed to rent other warehouses very close to here, in Picasent, where They hope to start work early next week. They will stay there until Alquería de Moret has supplies again, the streets are clean and their trucks and vans can circulate normally, something that they do not estimate will happen for at least three months. Aid to companies is not a priority: «They appear in sixth place. “No one comes to help us companies.” María Álvarez Although Higiman has financial resources and can afford it, they have encountered logistical difficulties in being able to temporarily raise the blinds elsewhere. “Now we have encountered another problem: although the industrial estate we are going to is perfect, the transport companies say they are not going there because the zip code appears to them to be affected by DANA,” says Rafael. And he adds: “Everything is easy.” To solve this, they have turned to truck drivers who are not part of large transportation companies. «Many volunteers pass by here, but none of them stop to help. I understand that the people are more important and that many people are suffering, but at least they clean the streets,” says María, while adding that aid to companies is not a priority: “They are in sixth place. No one comes to help us companies. It was last Sunday when Rafael managed to enter the offices of the family business for the first time. Together with ten friends who went to help him, they began to remove mud from the outside to gain access to the 14-meter-high warehouses. Inside, the water had reached three meters and had mixed with fecal water. Thanks to another friend, he managed to rent a tractor with which they have managed to clean one of the warehouses, using the water that runs through a ditch next to the industrial estate. They also encountered another problem: “The cranes do not work to lower the merchandise that has not been damaged.” Without the streets cleaned, they cannot have them repaired or bring in new ones. “We need help” A few kilometers from here, in Sedaví, the Army was helping several industrial warehouses yesterday for which the strength of volunteers, family and friends was not enough to even begin to assess the damage. They needed heavy machinery to access the businesses and begin cleaning work. One of these companies is Soncol, which sold mattresses. On its wall you could read, written in clay: “We need help.” «Our business is a family business, it is run by my father, my sister, a colleague and me. Until yesterday we were helping my friend with his house, which is destroyed, and today we came here. We hoped to be able to save something, but there is nothing left,” says Jose, one of the owners, while the soldiers helped them remove soaked mattresses from a warehouse where the water even opened holes in the walls. «The store is still running because we have it in Valencia, but we have nothing to sell. No need to distribute, because the van was here and it burst. Everything is destroyed. And we have lost material, which at the end of the day is just that, but the people who could have been saved if these guys had been here the first or second day…” he laments. «Now we can’t do anything. “Just start over.”
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