I have been an on-and-off Mumsnetter for years, I’m Valencian, and haven’t seen a thread until now about what is happening in Spain.
The situation is dire. For those unaware of what has happened, I urge you to read about it. On Tuesday 29 October, large areas west and south of the city of Valencia suffered the deadliest flash floods ever recorded in the country. Ever since that night, we live in a constant nightmare. I am one of the lucky ones whose town was not damaged. My family is alive. It was a terrifying night and many people survived by climbing on to their roofs, cars, or trees. Some of our neighbours took 2 days to come back home after sleeping on a lorry, the roof of a gas station, I could go on.
215 deaths have been reported so far. The real number is much, much higher. Water came all of a sudden and caught thousands of people out in the streets, shopping, driving back from work. A year’s worth of rain fell in just a few minutes, and towns downstream were flash-flooded out of nowhere. The emergency alert came in at 8:15pm, by which point hundreds of people had already been dragged by the water and killed. None of us saw this coming, I was at work until 7:45pm and made it back totally unaware just because I happen to live on the other side of the river. We were not warned that this amount of water was coming.
The destruction has been immense. Whole neighbourhoods wiped out. Roads are blocked, railways unusable, thousands of cars and lorries were dragged by the water and now block streets and access routes to the city itself (which is unaffected due to the river being diverted after the floods in 1957).
The worst of it is that there are still thousands of missing people. They estimate 2000, but it could be higher. Many towns and villages still don’t have running water, electricity, phone signal, and their roads are totally inaccessible so nobody knows what has happened to their inhabitants.
The amount of mud everywhere is terrifying. People don’t have clean water or food, access to toilets, many are still unable to come out of their homes due to mud and car piles blocking their streets. People have lost everything - their homes, cars, businesses and belongings.
Corpses are found all the time inside cars in garages, parking lots, floating away in the streams… It is gruesome. The conditions are unhygienic. The mayor of one town has said they have hundreds of cars at the bottom of the hill still buried in the mud, and none of their presumed occupants have been seen or heard of since the flood. This is a real tragedy. It is not being reported properly outside of Spain from what I can see.
The regional government is fighting with the national government over who needs to pull the trigger and involve bigger agencies and resources in the recovery of this area. I won’t go into the details, it’s shameful.
Help has come late and not in enough quantities - the Valencian people have walked over the bridge to the damaged side of the river for days now, with buckets, spades, brooms and cleaning supplies, and they are cleaning the streets. All the furniture inside damaged homes needs to be thrown away. People are collecting incredible amounts of food, water, sanitary and baby products, and the police is finally organising supply routes to most towns. It’s the citizens of the region who are doing the heavy lifting right now.
The Army apparently came in yesterday. Let’s hope they stay for longer than a week. Thousands of people are missing. We need proper machines to pump out water from garages and streets. Some villages are still to see the Emergency Military Unit (UME) who is meant to clear bodies, bring food and water and start repairs. Nobody is helping these people, roads are too damaged for cars to drive there, it’s too far to walk.
I have been unable to help physically this weekend due to caring responsibilities. Tomorrow morning I will be going in to sweep mud out of homes, and hope the infestation in the affected towns (from a lack of sewage and clean water systems) doesn’t make us all ill. But we can’t just stay at home.
I ask that you please pray for the Valencian region. We are due heavy rainfall again tonight. We can’t cope with even more water. If you are not religious, please send your good thoughts over to Spain. We are too busy and too traumatised to protest to the government right now. The response has been appalling, and it’s the community coming together and cleaning the streets by hand, one by one, that will end up rebuilding the area. Pray that aid reaches the cut-off towns. That people can call their loved ones and find out they are well. That this nightmare ends soon. Sorry for the very long post, but this needs to be known more widely.