It’s a post-apocalyptic scenario.. Perhaps due to lack of ideas or because of the graphic nature of the scene, it is the best simile to describe the situation in Picanya, Paiporta, Sedaví or Alfafar, the towns most affected by the flood in the province of Valencia. Streets blocked by cars, trucks and even boats, destroyed and piled up, mixed with all kinds of belongings, destroyed houses and the ground covered by a foot of mud. A scene from an end of the world movie in which a handful of brave people walk the streets in search of survivorswater or food, while protecting itself from theft and robbery of the most unscrupulous. The sad thing is that it is not fiction, there is no screen behind it, it is real and it is happening.
Robberies, yes. They began in the first hours of the flood, as soon as the meter and a half layer of water and mud began to retreat and allowed access to the streets to no longer be deadly. «Some say it is for eating, but the televisions with their pristine boxes that they took out of the shopping center from the Silla track that same night they are not going to be served for dinner,” says Xema, who along with two friends walks the streets of Alfafar and Sedaví checking that there are no bodies left among the piled-up cars or inside them.
“They have burst the Carrefour, the jewelry store, that is not for eating,” says Jorge, one of the young people who accompanies them, just when a couple equipped with a flashlight enters the “everything for one euro” store in front of us. “Look, look,” they point out to us. We are approaching quickly. False alarm. The couple comes out immediately and explains to us that they are looking for their car. And yes, although it may sound incredible, even the small space of the store is occupied by two vehicles dragged inside by the force of the water. “It’s not ours, it’s a dark blue BMW,” says the woman as they continue the search in the mountain of cars that cuts across the street.
This time it was not a looting, but hours before in Picanya we had encountered two young people dragging a heavy Mercadona cart through the mud. “It’s free, they’re handing it out at Mercadona, you go in and get what you want,” they tell us. «But, is there someone there distributing it?, we asked them. “No, but everyone does it,” they reply with a descending tone that betrays them in the lie. Also the calculator they carry on the cola bottles and milk boxes, probably from one of the establishment’s registers.
Some of the supermarkets where the blinds were not torn off by the water have chosen to open the doors and allow neighbors to take what they need. “I took some cookies, muffins and milk, but there are those who came out with jars of mayonnaise and bottles of whiskey,” tells us a woman who contemplates from a pedestrian walkway the tangle of cars and tree trunks that fills the beach with tracks in front of her. to Alfafar station.
A few hours later, in Benetússer, the ‘looting’ seems controlled. A small group distributes the loot they accumulate in some supermarket carts. In front of them, a long queue waits its turn. “There are no more eggs, look,” says one of the women who seemsThe imitation of a particular white label Robin Hood. “Pizza is fine for me,” says one of those waiting in line. “Please don’t take photos!” They shout at us from the background when they discover that we are recording the scene.
The jewels of the corpses
As in those post-apocalypse narratives we talked about, looting is the order of the day. There are those who justify it, “what are we going to do if it was going to go to waste”, but it also embarrasses those who are surprised that “in a misfortune like this there are people capable of bringing out the worst in human beings.” “They take car batteries, exhaust pipes, tools, everything they can find”some neighbors confess to us. “Some say that in the first hours there were people looking for corpses to steal their jewelry, but I haven’t seen it, it would hurt me a lot if it weren’t a hoax,” explains another.
At the end of the afternoon, in Benetússer, the sirens of a Civil Guard car that rushes as fast as it can through the muddy streets make people wandering around have to move away. A worthy couple gets out in front of us. «Where is the jewelry» They ask the neighbors who point them to a ground floor at the end of the block. They run there, although again it is a false alarm: those inside turn out to be the owners, who are assessing the destruction and cleaning up what little remains.
But in the destroyed streets, few stores remain intact. Those that are not washed away by water have empty windows like a shoe store on the outskirts of Benetússer. The question is whether someone took them, or it was the owners who got them out in time and they look the vacuum as a guarantee that no one will break the glass in search of what is not his.
A van loaded with furniture
Thefts are not exclusive to this area of Valencia’s orchard. On Wednesday night, early in the morning, while we were checking the damage at ground zero of the flood in Utiel, a couple from the Civil Guard stopped us to ask us where we were going. “We are journalists, we are seeing how the place is,” we replied while showing them the accreditations. “Go ahead,” they told us, “we are in the area because people are coming in to steal.” Not even ten minutes had passed when, upon leaving, the same couple stopped a white van loaded to the brim with furniture, immaculate, without a drop of mud. The excuses that they were taking them to the landfill to throw them away were of little use to the occupants.
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