Antonio returned yesterday afternoon from work to Paiporta. Like so many drivers who were not warned of the virulence of the water that ran through the Poyo ravine, they were trapped by the current that had overflowed. Right at the access roundabout to the municipality. “The water was going at an insane speed. The water caught us and at the Paiporta roundabout the stopped cars were swept away by the water. The water passed at a brutal speed. I went out of the car window and the water threw me against a fence and I stayed there,” explains Antonio in an interview on À Punt radio.
“There were a lot of people on top of cars and trucks. A girl standing on a pole. The current ripped off my clothes when I was clinging to the fence. I couldn’t move. I started screaming because I saw that I wasn’t going to last. I didn’t want to die. The car went down the ravine. He took everything. Fortunately, a guy helped me into a truck. The pressure of the water made it impossible for them to help us. “I have injuries from the blow,” said this driver who spent the night at the Petxina sports center, set up to care for the victims.
“Three hours after being in the truck, the water began to go down and we got out on our own. I need clothes, from the waist down I’m naked. I have been born again, I hope I am wrong, but I think the current took people away there,” he explained.
“I thought I would never see my parents again.”
In Paiporta (l’Horta Sud) the chaos began around 7 p.m. “The Police warned us that the ravine had overflowed. In a matter of minutes the water went from the ankles to the waist,” says Óscar Pozo, a resident of the Valencian town. The young man lives with his parents and tells how, immediately, the neighbors all went out to the street together to take out their cars. A few minutes later, the power supply was cut off, which remains inactive in the morning. “They notified us when the water was already in the street and the Police checkpoint was next to the ravine,” laments the young man, who criticizes the “poor management” of the emergency: “The alarm came very late.”
“My parents went out to take the car to the outskirts. The water began to rise, the cars rolling, the containers on the street… I thought I would never see them again,” he points out. They had a really bad time in their building. “A man stayed inside the elevator when the power went out and the neighbor took him out.” The young man tells his story to elDiario.es already from the outskirts of the town, near the Civil Guard facility, with the first UME agents. “It’s full of boats, helicopters, it’s like a movie,” he explains with little mobile coverage.
“We saw the cars and the water below us”
JAC was returning from València to his home in Picassent along the Silla highway that borders the most affected areas from Sedaví to Masanassa, where a ravine overflowed: “At 7:30 p.m., near the Carrefour in Alfafar, we could no longer advance with the cars, we were stopped and the water began to flow from Carrefour to the highway road. “I decided to get out of the car with my daughter, we went up to the median that separates the two directions and we walked in search of a safe place.”
According to him, other people followed them “but others stayed in the car even though we told them to get out because the water was getting higher and higher.” “We don’t know what happened to them. Finally we saw the Sedaví bridge that crosses the highway and we went up there. About 500 people gathered, it was tremendous, we saw all the cars and the water below us. People behaved quite well, there were cars stuck on the bridge as well and a bus,” he says.
He spent the night with his daughter on the bus until the Civil Guard arrived at 5 in the morning. “He took us all to the Valencia Basket farm… Here we will be with blankets and food that they brought us until we can return home. The image has been dantesque, like a horror movie, there must have been 2,000 cars stacked on the highway between Sedaví and Catarroja… we have been very lucky, the bridge saved our lives.”
Others, like José Luis, had to spend the night outside until the emergency services arrived. In his case, he spent hours in a ball park with his children at the Leroy Merlin until they were able to rescue them.
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