Enrique is sitting at the door of his house waiting for help to arrive, knowing that time is of the essence for him. He cannot leave because cancer has left him without the strength to walk, and even speaking exhausts him. "I know there is a lot of work to be done, but we ask for help to fix the road," he tells us. One might think that his plight is incomparable to those who are still finding themselves in trouble kilometers to the south or in Chiva. He even knows that some of his neighbors in El Quemao may be buried under the rubble of their homes. But the DANA has hit everyone where it hurts.
He, like his neighbor Carmina, who has lupus, needs medical treatment but is trapped. La Cañada del Charco in Chiva has been isolated. There is no access road, washed away by the water with sinkholes of almost two meters where a person can fit. To leave, one has to walk over a kilometer. "I can't walk. I am very ill. On Wednesday, I had chemotherapy and couldn't go. On Thursday, I have another session and I can't leave from here," he recounts. "I feel bad, I retain fluid in my stomach and need medical monitoring, because they have even removed 16 liters from me," he explains.
Carmina Sánchez has it easier. Her lupus does not prevent her from walking, and she can reach the road for someone to drive her to treatment at the General Hospital of Valencia. Because there is no public transportation either. "We have been asking for 14 years to fix the roads, and every time it rains, we do it ourselves. But now it's impossible. We are country people, we have tools, but not enough. We lack heavy equipment," she says while standing in a hole.
"For Enrique, we managed to get an all-terrain wheelchair, but even so, he can't leave. Yesterday the Civil Guard said they would try to send someone with a stretcher to carry him out, but we don't know anything else. No healthcare professionals have come to see how he is or anyone remembers us. We feel abandoned," he laments.
These are families with elderly and children for whom water and food, after five days of total isolation, were starting to run out. "A tractor brought us food. We know they are overwhelmed and that there are priorities, but by fixing the road, we would no longer be in this situation," she insists.
This is also the plea made by Lorena, who was caught in the car with her two children by the water and managed to escape on foot. She abandoned the vehicle, had what little she had inside stolen, and when she could take refuge in her house, with some of the walls collapsed, she found herself trapped because she could no longer leave.
They still feel fortunate because they have seen collapses in nearby urbanizations. Chiva, like Pedralba or Loriguilla, other towns affected by the DANA, has a large population scattered in urbanizations where, almost a week after the tragedy, no one has been able to enter yet.