Sitting on her father's walker, next to the mud-covered furniture that litters the sidewalk in front of her house, Beatriz Frau stares into space. A week has passed since torrential rains and an immense wave overflowing the Magro River, swept over the town of Algemesi, a rural town of 27,000 inhabitants, surrounded by orange trees and persimmons, 35 kilometers south of Valencia. Here, as in the rest of the province, where floods left 211 dead and 78 missing, a return to normal seems far away.
Wednesday, November 6, Beatriz Frau finished clearing and cleaning the devastated ground floor of her modest house. This 40-year-old garden center employee still has no electricity and goes to shower with neighbors, like the rest of her family. With her two children, her niece and her parents, living with her, she remains stuck in the Raval district, whose streets are still nothing but deep quagmires.
Supposed to return to work on Monday, she still does not know how she will get there. “Here, neither the firefighters nor the soldiers came”she said, her face distorted by a grimace. It is the town hall which designated the priority neighborhoods and streets, explains to Monde an official of the army, deployed in large numbers in the town. The one, poor and marginal, with an immigrant majority, of Raval, located on the other side of the out-of-use railway lines, has been forgotten or abandoned.
“Apart from the volunteers, no one helped us”confirms Emilia Saba, very psychologically affected. To get home to this unemployed 60-year-old woman, you have to make your way between mountains of mud and rubbish with a foul odor. Around her, half a dozen young people who came to lend a hand, armed with squeegees, brush brooms, masks over their noses, help her empty her house of furniture soaked in dirty water, where she thought she would die on October 29. “The water seeped under the door, then it broke a window and started to rise until it exceeded a meter. I spent the night perched on a stepladder, with my husband, usually on life support, while my daughter and grandson climbed on furniture.she remembers.
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In the morning, family and neighbors managed to break down the door. Since then, she and her husband have been sleeping at her sister's house, her 40-year-old daughter on a mattress on the floor, while her grandson is at an aunt's house. There is nothing left in her home, and the electricity has not been restored. “I lack the strength. My house was not insured, so I would not be entitled to compensation”she adds.
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