The memory of grief works at whim. The most curious data is kept about the dead so that we go down in history guided by the purest chance. If on 9 de Octubre Street in Paiporta the reporter asks what Emilieta, the neighbor whose body the coroner has just recovered, was like, all the neighbors agree that she liked plants. That he liked plants very much, perhaps exaggeratedly, and spent the last years of his life taking care of them in an almost Amazonian patio. Because Emilieta’s house had a patio, but like so many others, it did not have a staircase to go up to the upper floor, so she and her husband Salvador – who worked in a nursery and perhaps that was where love arose between them – were locked in their house. thanks to a machine gun of three and a half meters of mud, stones, branches and cars that the current shot against the corner of the facade. At the close of this chronicle, Salvador is still there in the humid silence of his house as night falls, waiting for the coroner who took his wife away a little over an hour ago to return. Two guards guard the door of the pantheon, muddy, sleepy, with their hearts filled with witnessing the effects of misfortune. The one who approaches is Neus, 24 years old, and he addresses a civil guard almost out of breath. Her bottom lip trembles and it’s obvious that she’s just stopped crying. The firefighters have freed her from her house – many neighbors are still trapped in their home until someone destroys the door stuck in the mud – and she has decided to confirm what she fears and that she cannot verbalize before the civil guards: « There were two here…?”, he begins, but remains silent, and hesitates. Then he returns: «Was the house empty? Why are you there at the door? Is there something inside the house? I mean, is there anyone inside the…? The civil guard looks her in the eyes, facing her, takes off her vinyl gloves and takes her hands affectionately. They hug and there is nothing to say. Neus breaks down crying over the right epaulette of his uniform: Emilieta and Salvador are dead. Neus has not heard from them since he last heard their voices when they called his grandmother, who lives next door. «I was very scared. He said they wanted to go up to his sister-in-law’s house, who lived upstairs, but then the door broke and I heard the water coming in. “The call was cut off.” Josefa, her sister-in-law, never saw her go up. The ravine, normally empty, roared like a reactor. Related News standard No “There is no water in the garage dad, we go down to get the cars”: the call that ended with eight people drowned Alberto CaparrósIt never went up because most of the houses of the old area of Paiporta are built so that the upper and lower floors have independent entrances. They did this or the family houses were broken up, it depends, but to go up, you have to leave. When the flood comes, going out is impossible, so Paiporta, where most of the losses from this week’s flood catastrophe have been concentrated, is today a cemetery without cypresses or crosses or tombstones and everything is branches and cars crushed, overturned, without roofs, full of branches and shreds of things. The UME vehicles, normally so red and cheerful, advance through the mud slowly and gloomily as if they were pulled by seven black horses. Forensics work overtime. Only on Balmes Street, two streets beyond 9 de Octubre, five bodies have been found, although they believe that more could be hidden under the mass of wood and vehicles that reaches the first floor. “You don’t know when you’re going to shovel the mud and a hand will appear,” says Adriana, a neighbor. C. apaolazaMiguel remembers that when the water started to rise, they went down to look for another neighbor named Isabel, but the door was blocked by the water. He banged on the wood and told him to get out of there. But how? If I didn’t have a ladder. People spoke to her from the windows to make her escape from behind and she responded in unintelligible words until there was silence. When night fell and the water subsided, Miguel went looking for the old woman. “I found her dead, the poor thing.” Miguel has escaped from Paiporta with his wife and his son, Hugo, a boy of about four years old. «We’re leaving. Here there is only death.”Related News CASTILLA-LA MANCHA standard No Cemeteries are preparing to welcome thousands of people, with pain flying over Spain Francisca Ramírez”It seems unbelievable. At six in the afternoon, this was normal. The children were leaving school, we were going shopping… and suddenly, it was over. Luis recorded the first waters leaving the bridge and, five minutes later, his world had been blown up. Today, that universe is filled with people who carry belongings in the most bizarre ways – shopping carts, strollers, bathroom shelves with wheels, wheelchairs, bicycles – and arm themselves with brooms, dustpans and other newly created tools. purchased that will soon be absolutely useless. To avoid falling, they lean on reeds and reeds that give them a biblical air and, in order to protect themselves from the mud, many cover their feet with bags that are knotted halfway up, but they break two blocks away and go down. there like disastrous astronauts. Jesús and Ana carry their five children in a metal cart that has marked the children’s thighs with red squares of discomfort. The weather gives them an air like that of Mary and Joseph and now, as then, there is no inn, no Chinese tent, no water, no light. «The kids were hungry. There was no food and they were crying, so we decided to escape. “We came down from the house, we jumped over the cars, and we found this car.” A car stops next to them and offers them water and fruit. The children eat Huesitos in spades. Today, they have permission. Maybe that license is making them happy, I wonder. c. apaolazaHundreds of volunteers have come to the area to help, to remove mud and whatever is needed. Miguel and his six friends have come from Valencia in a solidarity drive. They are circus acrobats and they got together in a WhatsApp group, they agreed, they looked for a way to get there and here they are. At dusk there is a carousel of fire trucks along the ring roads and between the factories on the industrial estates, a horde of kids approaches the city with cars full of juices, jugs of water and chocolate bars. Laura, who is an architect, and her husband Carlos, have filled a wheelbarrow with a flat tire with apples. “Tomorrow we’ll be back, who else?” Miguel asks, and when they raise their arms showing their biceps, I remember that quote from Leonard Cohen when he said that in everything there is a crack, and that’s where the light comes in. To save the car, Paiporta is a necropolis like that of Cairo, but next to the Albufera. Sometimes it seems like everyone is dead, but suddenly someone shouts, “Doctor!” or a siren sounds. At this point, the sirens bring good news. It is normal for cars to drive in silence. They do not manage to lift Salvador’s body trapped in the arbitrary skein of fate. While he and Emilieta were drowning on October 9, three houses down, a boy was fighting for his life clinging to a fence. He asked for help and screamed for them to open the window he was clinging to. Nobody could go after him. Only the voice of a neighbor encouraged him: “Hold on! Don’t let go! Don’t be discouraged! “Hold on!” After a while, the boy fell silent, but he endured the pull and they rescued him, trembling, stiff, four hours of fighting later. Destiny braids its misdeeds and its best works in the same street. For others, it held the darkest part. “The worst is in the basements and in the garages,” admits a Benemérita agent who participates in the rescue efforts. «In many we can’t even get in, but we see cars piled up on the exit ramp and… -he is silent for a moment and raises his eyebrows-, and we know what’s inside.» The guard doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say either, because once again the tragedy is here and everyone sees it in its labyrinth of holes and torn-off walls, but it’s another thing to verbalize it, so they refer to “this thing that happened.” » and «the other«, as if they did not want to mention the horror. By “what has happened” he refers uncomfortably to the fact that many people died taking their vehicles out of the garages. “It’s not in my mood to blame the dead, but many died to save their fucking car.”
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