Narrative
Article reserved for subscribers
While the weather services had anticipated the climatic phenomenon, local authorities were slow to alert the population on Tuesday October 29.
The video lasts thirty-six seconds and shows the refectory of a retirement home in Paiporta, on the southern outskirts of Valencia. The residents are seated (on wheelchairs for some), and the water reaches their waists. Heartbreaking cries for help are heard, but most remain silent, dazed, unable to comprehend what is happening to them. Of the many images of the floods of Tuesday October 29, they are among the most dramatic. What happened next was not filmed: employees took the residents on their backs and managed to hoist them to safety. But they couldn't save everyone: six residents drowned.
The latter were waiting for their dinner and the downpours took them by surprise. How could vulnerable people be brought together on a ground floor, when alarming information about the risk of flooding had been circulating since the morning? In the highly decentralized Spanish administrative system, responsibility for alerts to protect populations fell to the Generalitat, or Autonomous Valencian Community, a region made up of three provinces: Valencia, Alicante and Castellón. But the shelter notice was only issued after 8 p.m., when the torrents of mud had already devastated roads and villages, and the first disappearances were reported.
“Be very careful! Extreme danger!”
As information on deaths becomes clearer (202
