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NEWS

Valencia faces a war zone scenario while counting their dead, who now number 155

Updated

The tragedy leaves a trail of catastrophic scenes that forces Carlos Mazón (President of the Generalitat Valenciana) to request the Army's help, while the Ministry of the Interior joins the crisis management

A civil guard seaches for survivors in cars piled up on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain.
A civil guard seaches for survivors in cars piled up on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain.AP

Few words can encapsulate the trauma, explain the impact, define the horror of a tragedy that seems to have no end. Few adjectives suffice to convey the magnitude of a catastrophe from which Valencia will take years to recover. The most devastating, destructive, cruel DANA... Any qualifier falls short when 155 are the deceased in a toll that remains provisional because no one dares to quantify the number of missing persons.

The floods that on Tuesday swept away people, cars, bridges, roads, and everything in their path have given way to a hellish panorama that has triggered global figures' solidarity such as the Pope, Tim Cook, or Zelenski. The Valencian capital and the most affected towns in the province - where accumulated rainfall reached almost 500 liters per square meter - are the image of what could easily pass for an apocalyptic scenario. Like a battlefield where a war has just been fought, pushing the State's capacity to its limits.

The President of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, who yesterday announced 250 million euros in direct aid for the affected, announced in the afternoon that the Army will be deployed in Valencia starting today to reinforce logistical and distribution tasks of assistance to the population. Simultaneously, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, will also join the crisis management after the controversy over whether the Generalitat warned the population too late about what was coming.

Valencia is currently a city with a neighborhood from which hundreds of people are trying to escape by any means in search of food. This is La Torre, which, after the storm, has been buried under mud and connected to the city only by a footbridge. The one that neighbors crossed yesterday in a continuous back and forth with carts and bags to find an open supermarket on the other side of the river. La Torre is that neighborhood in Valencia where at least 10 of the 13 fatalities recorded in the capital have occurred. The bodies had to be rescued from a garage.

Paiporta is another example illustrating what Valencia is today. A town of 25,000 inhabitants with 62 fatalities, where the streets are impassable because they are piled with mountains of cars. Paiporta is that town crossed by a metro line that still does not operate and keeps the capital disconnected from the metropolitan area. What used to be railway tracks are now a tangle of iron that residents have to navigate to move from one side to the other. 10 kilometers from Valencia, Paiporta, or what remains of it, is the epicenter of the tragedy.

Completely destroyed Valencia is also Alfafar, a small municipality of 10 square kilometers - also in the metropolitan area - whose mayor issued a cry for help yesterday because there are still "people living with corpses." Its shopping center, flooded after the rains, has two basement floors submerged under eight meters of water. Even so, in its cinemas, dozens of people were able to take refuge on Tuesday night from the DANA's passage.

Another image of chaos is that of Benetússer, with a supermarket that yesterday appeared looted in plain sight. Mud and dirt covering the entire floor and absolutely nothing on the shelves. It didn't matter, as people kept entering to rummage through boxes and cartons, to see who was lucky enough to find the last bottle of Coca-Cola or the last carton of milk. A supermarket left to its fate, like many other warehouses and factories in the industrial estates where workers were trapped on Tuesday night.

Valencia is now a scene of looting. To the extent that the Valencia Prosecutor's Office had to issue a statement yesterday announcing that it will request provisional detention for the detained individuals - already dozens - for thefts and robberies in establishments. The Prosecutor's Office condemned the "disdain" for the DANA victims that such behavior represents, "intolerable morally and criminally."

The Civil Guard reported the arrest of two men in Aldaia who had stolen clothes and watches from another shopping center. Another five were arrested in a sports store with 25 paddle rackets and sneakers. Nevertheless, displays of solidarity from companies and individuals are multiplying these days.

Regarding infrastructure, the reconstruction of a bridge that has blocked the A-7 as it passes through Valencia will take months - 100,000 vehicles daily circulate through this section - five bridges have collapsed on the CV-36, high-speed rail between Valencia and Madrid will be closed for at least three weeks...

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, guaranteed this Thursday during his visit to Valencia the Government's collaboration with the Generalitat "by land, sea, and air." After all, the floods extended to Castellón. The DANA is not over.