“We are better, but we are not well”: a week after the floods which left at least 218 dead in Spain, cleaning and research operations continue on Tuesday in the ravaged municipalities, to clear out debris and piled-up vehicles in the mud.
In Paiporta, a town of 25,000 inhabitants located in the suburbs of Valencia and considered the epicenter of the disaster, with more than 70 victims, drinking water is again available to residents, but electricity has not been restored. has yet to be restored in all homes, summarized Mayor Maribel Albalat on Tuesday.
And if numerous volunteers equipped with shovels and brooms have once again converged in the devastated towns, elected officials are calling for professional equipment to clear the hundreds of cars still overturned on the roads.
“We need machines, we need professionals who come and clean the streets, empty them, so that people can take care of their homes,” implored Ms. Albalat on the TVE channel.
In Paiporta, “100% of homes and 100% of businesses have been affected. We need businesses to help us,” urged the councilor.
To cope with the staggering cost of the disaster, the regional government has already put on the table an envelope of 250 million euros, with multiple tax breaks and compensation and Parliament validated on Tuesday direct aid of 30 million euros to people affected by the damage.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is expected to announce a series of measures for disaster areas during the Council of Ministers, Spanish media also report.
A week after the devastating and historic floods, the provisional death toll stands at 218 deaths: 214 in the Valencia region alone, three in Castile-la-Mancha and one in Andalusia.
The courts have already authorized the handing over of “nearly fifty bodies” of the deceased to their families, the Superior Court of Justice of Valencia indicated on the social network X.
And the priority always remains the location of the missing, the precise number of whom has never been communicated.
– “Sentiment d’abandon” –
The authorities are particularly concerned about the situation in many underground car parks, which are completely flooded and which have not yet been completely inspected.
In recent days, the personnel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), which responds to natural disasters, have installed numerous pumps to begin evacuating the water.
Divers managed on Monday morning to penetrate the underground parking lot of Bonaire, a vast shopping center in Aldaia, a town of 31,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valencia.
With a capacity of 5,700 places, almost half of which are underground, it raised many concerns and was regularly at the heart of “fake news” broadcast on social networks. But so far, emergency services have not found any bodies there.
In Picanya, near Valencia, “neighbors” are still missing, underlines mayor Josep Almenar, who, a week after the disaster, continues to “take out the city’s trash, take out the cars.”
On Monday morning, the Spanish meteorological agency (Aemet) officially assured that the “meteorological crisis” situation had ended in the Valencia region.
The crisis is far from over.
“It’s been six days, already six days, and it’s only the population that helps us, we can only count on the solidarity of the population,” laments Matilde Gregori, owner of a store, to AFP. devastated by floods in Sedavi, near Valencia.
“The politicians, where are they? Where are they? Why didn’t they raise the alarm? Assassins. They are assassins,” she says, while taking part in a distribution of help.
This exasperation materialized on Sunday with an explosion of anger from residents against the King of Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the President of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón, during a visit to Paiporta, greeted with shouts from “Assassins!” and targeted by jets of mud and objects.
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