Flood Victims' Never-ending Nightmare

Photo: Manaure Quintero Agence France-Presse Firefighters search for bodies among debris on November 2, 2024, following deadly flooding in the town of Alfafar, in the Valencia region of eastern Spain.

Rosa Sulleiro – Agence France-Presse in Alfafar, Spain

Published at 16:37

• Europe

In waist-deep water, firefighters probe the dark water on which pieces of wood and rubbish float. Their fear: finding the bodies of new victims, four days after the tragic floods that have cast a shadow over southeastern Spain.

In this underground tunnel in Alfafar, on the outskirts of Valencia, several cars were stuck when torrents of mud swept through several towns in the region on Tuesday night, killing at least 211 people.

Although the sun has come out, the basements are still “all flooded,” Javier Lopez told AFP, shaking his hands covered in mud. “Now that they have started to evacuate the water, I imagine we are going to discover quite a high number of victims.” »

On the night of the tragedy, this resident managed to find safety after seeing a “cascade” of muddy water rush into the tunnel, right next to his home. The latter is now devastated. As is his business, located in the neighboring town of Benetússer.

“The office, the building, the vehicles, the cars that we had on the street… Everything is lost,” sighs Javier, dejected, alongside his friends who came to help him evacuate the mud that had entered the ground floor of his house. “We are all in shock,” he insists.

“Everything lost”

A few blocks away, near the church of Sedaví, a fire truck tries to drain the water that has flooded a two-story underground parking garage. Here again, people may be trapped, and the residents’ nightmare seems to have no end in sight.

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“We took a wave of almost a meter, which then grew and was very strong. The cars that arrived were piled on top of each other,” says Paquita, a 76-year-old neighbor who watched from her balcony as the water swept away everything in its path.

She hopes that no one was stuck in the parking lot. But here, as in many other disaster-stricken communities, uncertainty remains. “There are people who have lost everything and who are also looking for their loved ones,” she recalls.

In the middle of a street, a little further away, a woman screams. The neighbors come running: she has just seen how the flood has ravaged her business.

Despite the incessant work of residents and volunteers, traces of the disaster appear at every step: here, tangles of cars blocking passage, there, objects covered in mud littering the sidewalks…

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“Left all alone”

“Thanks to the people who came to help us, thanks to everyone, because on the authorities' side, there's no one,” says Estrella Cáceres, 66, indignantly.

On the ground floor of her house, where she has lived for 40 years, activity is frenetic. Friends and family members throw away objects that are no longer usable, and try to salvage the memories she cherishes.

On the night of the storm, Estrella was with her grandchildren in the house. Seeing the water level rising, they went up to the second floor. “Without this, we might not be here, my granddaughter and I,” she says.

At the back of the house, her husband Manuel is trying to clean a room where the water has reached almost a meter and a half high. “It's going to take months, because we can't get the car out,” predicts the former firefighter.

In front of the only pharmacy still open in Alfafar, dozens of neighbors are queuing. From here, a return to normal life still seems a long way off.

“I know a lot of people who have died and disappeared,” confides Charo de la Rosa, who has come to buy medicine for her parents.

“They are neighbors, they are people you love, with whom you grew up […] People you will never see again and whose death, so difficult and so cruel, could have been avoided,” says this hotel employee, pointing out the absence of the authorities: “they left us all alone.”