A French woman living near Valencia was the victim of floods which left more than 210 dead this week in the Valencia region in Spain. Clearance, supplies, electricity shortage… She tells BFMTV how life is organized after the disaster.
A few days after the floods which left 211 victims in the Valencia region in Spain, life is trying to get back to normal. Stéphanie, a French woman living in Paiporta – a few kilometers south of Valencia – recounts the chaos and then the struggle that took place during her first days there, while she was still deprived of drinking water this Saturday, November 2 .
“At first we did a little as we could (…) The electricity came back today at 1 p.m. but we still have no water,” she tells BFMTV.
“The first two days, there was no one”
It is difficult for her, however, to forget the first days after the disaster, when the inhabitants were left to their own devices. “The first two days, there was no one,” she remembers. “Today the helicopters and military trucks are starting to arrive. It’s starting to get organized.”
This French woman also explains that supply points have been organized since Friday to stock up on water, hygiene products and food. She explains that she went to collect what she could from several supermarkets.
Flood in Spain: what weather phenomena caused this disaster?
Stéphanie says she is “sorry” by “the catastrophic vision” of her town turned upside down after the floods. “It's hard to see people who have nothing left: there are some who have lost everything, everything at home is lost, soaked, everything is in the street. They have lost their car, their job.”
In recent hours, however, she has been moved by the surge of solidarity that has taken place locally. “Yesterday (Friday), lines of people were flocking to Paiporta with shovels, brooms, wheelbarrows… Anything to clear away all the mud in the streets.”
Tuesday evening, “the water rose very, very quickly” in the streets and in her building, says Stéphanie, who explains that a sort of “blockage” had formed upstream at the river level. “When this one jumped, it rose very, very quickly, in the space of just a few hours,” she continues, describing 2.50m of water in the streets of Paiporta in the evening, before all this collapsed. turns to mud overnight.
Jeanne Bulant Journalist BFMTV
