It was a busy time at the end of the day at the “Mercadona” supermarket in Paiporta (Spain), this town of 25,000 inhabitants located south of Valencia. Tuesday, October 27, the floods coming from the hills after torrential rains crossed the city and rushed into the parking lot of the supermarket. How many customers were trapped in the hundreds of square meters of the basement? How many tried to get their cars? How many managed to get out in time? No one knows, but no one can ignore that the water reached two meters throughout the city.
For three days, priorities were elsewhere, and if there was to be any hope of finding survivors, they could not be there, under this considerable mass of water. It was also necessary to clear the passage, a tangle of cars, by removing them one by one, so that the firefighters could reach the site with heavy equipment.
On Saturday morning, finally, more than three days after the torrential rains, the pumps began to evacuate the water. Thousands of cubic meters of muddy water. “It’s very long because it’s very big”notes Raoul Plou Martinez, firefighter from northern Spain who came to support his colleagues in the Valencia region who were completely overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis. Two pumps have been running for eight hours, and the level has dropped by only one meter. “It will take days. We fear the worst”adds a soldier from the Unidad Militar de Emergencias (UME), an army unit specializing in relief. Only then will the firefighters be able to explore the parking lot and the interior of the vehicles.
Divers probe the mud
How many disappeared in the “Mercadona”? How many corpses in the city’s numerous underground parking lots? In those of Alfatar, Benetusser or Picanya? In the whole region? The question is on everyone’s minds, four days after the deadly floods, the provisional toll of which shows 211 deaths around Valencia, three others in the rest of the country.
The authorities are showing relative transparency, undoubtedly to avoid further accentuating anxiety and anger, at the risk of encouraging rumours. The Minister of Territorial Policy, Angel Victor Torres, spoke on Thursday “dozens and dozens of missing” while the death toll was 155. According to Spanish media, several thousand people were reported missing in the hours following the crisis, a sign of the extent of the chaos in the affected cities. The re-establishment of means of communication helped to remove doubt for a large number of them, who were able to contact their loved ones, the authorities or return home.
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