Iván García Pérez, 42, was at his home in Alfafar last Tuesday enjoying a few days of vacation. When the deadly waterspout arrived around 8 p.m., he thought about helping as soon as he could get down to some already collapsed streets. “In the face of a tragedy, after surviving, you have to help in any way you can,” says this police officer who at three in the morning was already helping people. By then, cars had already piled up in the streets, forming sometimes impassable barriers that prevented access to the ground floors and traffic. In addition to the power outage, there was hardly any cell phone coverage and, therefore, it was very difficult to contact anyone on Wednesday and Thursday. This Friday, communications and supplies begin to improve, but everything very little by little, with many shortcomings.
Iván made an offer on his Give it diffusion; thank you”. The message had multiple views and comments in just two days. “Catalina Rodríguez Díaz, elderly woman with a respirator and dependent. Maestro Barrachina 23″, wrote María Teresa. “Located! Social services have her with her granddaughter. “They're fine!” Iván responded after a few hours.
“We have been able to help three families who have found or could not contact their loved ones,” the police officer explains to this newspaper by phone. “I have located Catalina Rodríguez alive on Maestro Barrachina Street and Raúl Bresos on Reyes Católicos Avenue in Alfafar. They are all fine. Relatives notified. We continue,” the agent wrote in X. “Now we have light, but before there was none. People couldn't charge their cell phones. My Twitter was there and I have used it, with public and private messages.”
Iván highlights the solidarity of the neighbors, but cannot help but also note the meanness of some. He says in a post in his account: “And now, after the misfortune, I am going to tell the HUMAN MISERY of the people. When the water stopped flowing in Alfafar, from 12 to 3 in the morning I went down to help people. While I and many others helped, others LOOTED eyeglasses stores, TVs… EVERYTHING. “How angry I felt.” “Yes that's how it is. In tragedies there is generosity and also human misery: While we were helping people cross a street, others were stealing,” he comments, before leaving to get a van and filling it with food to return with it. At the moment, he cannot return to work. Most communications remain closed, there is no subway, there are no private cars. “In the meantime, I am going to continue helping in whatever way I can here, in my town,” he adds.
