Mud and overturned cars: cleanup has begun in Valencia after the storm

Robert Novoski

For thirteen hours straight, 46-year-old Jordi Chilet Ferrer has been sweeping. Mud from the living room to the hallway, then over the threshold with a shovel and into the street. Sweeping, shoveling, panting. There’s no end to it: the terrace is brown with mud, the garage is impassable. But together with his friend Jorge Navarro, he took over the wheel, “so that the house would at least be passable again when my elderly parents returned from their vacation.”

The brown lines on the white walls show how high the water is: about waist-high. Chilet Ferrer was here when the water came, from the mountains, and it came very quickly. “At first you see small waves moving down the street, within fifteen minutes the waves were knee high.”

While the water flowed into the house through the cracks in the door, Chilet tried to save several things: papers at the bottom of the cupboard, money and jewelry, he took as much as possible to a safe place, until the water in the living room was also submerged. high and he fled to the top floor. There he saw through the window how the street turned into a river, along which cars floated like boats.

Broken furniture was placed outside along the road.Picture Eline van Nes

‘You see disasters like this on television’

A natural disaster occurred in the Valencia region on Tuesday evening. That cold declinewhich is literally a cold drop, where warm and cold air collide and heavy rain occurs, occurring with unprecedented intensity. Entire neighborhoods were flooded.

What’s even more incredible: it doesn’t just end there. As Chilet was cleaning his hallway on Thursday afternoon, another weather warning was issued in Castellón north of Valencia and in southern Andalusia, the roof of a swimming pool was torn off by the storm.

At least 158 ​​people died as a result of the storm, dozens more are missing, and Spaniards are wondering whether unnecessary suffering could have been prevented if the Aemet weather service had issued an alarm earlier. That didn’t happen until Tuesday night.

“You see disasters like this on television,” Navarro sighed, leaning on his broom. Loudspeakers sounded outside the street: residents were urged to use tap water – if it comes from the tap – only as drinking water and not for tidying and cleaning. Saying goodbye, Chilet said: “Be careful, ahead is like a war zone.”

It immediately became clear that this was no exaggeration: cars lay on top of each other, as if a giant had thrown handfuls onto the road. An excavator tries to bring order to the chaos by sweeping mud from the street, all the garage doors are bent.

Excavators are used to sweep mud and rubbish from the streets.Picture Eline van Nes

In front of a specialty shop selling Spanish ham, a car lay on its side, people walked across the muddy road, some of them looking very shocked. In the Aldi parking lot, cars lay upside down, rainbow-colored glass containers rolled over, friends pulled shopping carts with their dogs inside through the mud.

‘Objects are meaningless, life is precious’

This cleanup will take a long time, that’s clear. The government has promised aid of six thousand euros for each person affected, but it is clear that the damage caused is much greater than that. There was a long line of thirsty residents near a tanker truck containing drinking water. José Maria Navarro, 57, the driver of the car, came from Alicante, two hours away. “All of Spain is helping, this region is the area that has been most affected.”

At a further street corner, two men hooked cables to a completely destroyed car, after which they steadily pulled it off the road in a sturdy jeep. One of the men, Ernesto Salvador, 55, said his workshop down the street was “luckily not affected.” So now he and his partner spend all day helping with their 4×4.

They pushed another car along with people from the bar around the corner – which had also been completely destroyed by the flood, broken bar stools piled up in front of the door. Salvador: “This is all I can do, make the roads passable. We have to do it ourselves, help each other as neighbors.”

At the open door of her house, Ana Mari Minguez, 83, watched her grandchildren sweep mud from her hallway. His son took the mud-stained furniture outside and put it with other rubbish. “Take the sheet music with you,” said the old woman. “The piano was broken, my house was completely flooded. But you know, we are still alive.”

She pulled her blouse down a bit, revealing a tattoo of two hearts on the wrinkled skin of her shoulder. “Put it down when my husband died last January. I just want to say, those things are meaningless, it’s life that’s worth living.”

Also read:

Where does heavy rainfall in Spain come from?

Flooding caused widespread damage in Valencia province and surrounding areas on Wednesday, resulting in at least 158 ​​deaths. In some places, rain falls from the sky for a whole year.

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