—Do you need to talk?
After crossing a doorway still full of mud, three Red Cross volunteers knock on the door of Antonio, a man of almost eighty years who has not left his house in Paiporta since the storm devastated the entire town.
— I’m fine, my daughter has come from Madrid and luckily I have a little more company now.
House by house, door by door, a group of psychologists, social workers and volunteers from this entity toured the most damaged areas of Paiporta on Thursday, one of the municipalities of the so-called ‘zone zero’ of DANA that remains devastated nine days later. of the flood
They bring food and medicine to neighbors who still do not dare to leave their homes. And they also offer psychological help to those who have lost everything and cannot see a future when the mud disappears from the streets. According to the first provisional count, 62 residents have died in Paiporta.
They have brought Antonio his medication, fruit and other food so that he can survive until he dares to go out on the street again. He thanks them and asks them how the situation is down there. They answer that he is not ready to leave yet. “Wait a few more days,” they ask.
A good part of the streets of Paiporta (27,000 inhabitants) remain undone. On some roads there are still two spans of water and mud. The narrowest ones remain impassable and mountains of garbage and unusable furniture pile up on the sidewalks to the point that some streets cannot even be walked through.
The smell of garbage, humidity and mud make it difficult to breathe without a mask in some areas. There are still many basements impregnated with mud and the streets are saturated with volunteers, firefighters, police, military and hundreds of vehicles from the army, the UME and different bodies and state security forces.
“The first days people were totally shocked, busy cleaning up and locating their families,” explains Patricia Martínez, a 33-year-old social worker who participates in the Red Cross operation. “Since yesterday we began to notice that some affected people admit that they need psychological attention.”
In colloquial terms, both Martínez and the psychologist with whom he is a partner, Rocío Antón, point out that the population of Paiporta begins to “get down” after a few days in which, because they were so overwhelmed, they could not even stop and think about everything that has happened. “Now comes the return to reality,” they warn.
The main pathology detected in the population is anxiety. Severe insomnia and nightmares are also being found in residents who saw how the streets were flooded with water up to more than two meters high.
“Those who have survived think above all about what could have happened to them,” says Antón, the psychologist, as she winds through the streets of a municipality that looks like a war zone.
3,000 people deployed
Since last Wednesday, the Red Cross alone has deployed more than 3,000 people on the ground to help DANA victims. There are about 300 teams that, according to data from the entity, have provided 178,000 assistance and have distributed almost 100,000 meals among the population and the bodies deployed in the area.
Among those who have come to work these days is Paco Túnez, an employee of the Tax Agency in Tarragona who has been combining his profession with volunteer work for more than 35 years that has taken him to catastrophes around the world.
“I have been in two tsunamis in the Philippines and the situation here is very similar,” he says while driving an emergency vehicle through the saturated streets of Paiporta. “The pain is always similar, but there are areas of the world that are a little more accustomed to suffering situations like this.”
Since Monday, Tunisia has been walking the streets of the populations most affected by DANA doing first aid and psychosocial care tasks. Part of his work, he explains, has focused on people who are alone and have no one to help them.
“There are many people who need to talk, to feel that there is someone who cares about them,” he maintains. “You are not going to take away their pain, but you can try to help them regain control of the situation.”
Tunez walks alongside other volunteers, such as Noelia Valls or Manuel Bravo, who arrived from Alcoi. They have all been in complex situations for years, from a cholera epidemic in Haiti to the fire in Valencia last February. Everyone agrees on the magnitude of the tragedy of October 29.
“This is a huge, unfathomable emergency,” explains Bravo. “It is not focused on a single place but the misfortune is immense and widespread.”
Red Cross staff not only distribute food and medicine or offer psychological assistance. When they reach a place where hands are missing, they are the first to stop what they are doing to grab brooms and remove mud.
Patricia and Rocío, the two professionals who provide psychological care at home, arrive around three in the afternoon at the home of Loli, a woman who narrowly escaped the flood and whose house was badly affected.
When they arrive, they find that their home is flooded again. They both roll up their sleeves, grab two brooms and start trying to get all the water out of their house.
After almost an hour with the brooms, the floor is once again minimally presentable. Finally they manage to chat with Loli for a while, to find out how she is. Loli says that at some moments she cannot stop crying, but that it also comforts her to see how the population tries to help each other and to know that deep down they have been saved.
—Can we do something else for you?—they ask him before leaving his house.
— No, calm down. I know I have your phone number and this gives me a lot of peace of mind.
The two workers hug Loli and leave to continue serving the other residents of Paiporta.
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