“When I was in the car swallowing water I got the cell phone alert”

Miguel Ángel was driving his car on the Picanya bridge on Tuesday afternoon, one of the black spots of the worst flood that the Valencian Community has ever experienced, when he saw that something was wrong. A traffic jam and a flood running through the asphalt: “It was 7:15 p.m. and ten minutes later, around 7:25 p.m., the car was already floating. I had to open the window to get my head out because the water was almost up to my chest. I put my cell phone up so I could communicate. At eight or so, when I was up to my neck in water for an hour and swallowing mud, the civil protection alert sounded,” he says between sarcasm and anger from the streets of a town that he no longer recognizes: “It seems that there was After a typhoon or a tsunami, I don’t even know what street I am on.”

At 8:12 p.m. on Tuesday, millions of Valencians received the visual and audible alert on their mobile phone that Miguel Ángel speaks of: “You should avoid any type of movement in the province of Valencia.” By then, the brutal rains in the area of ​​Utiel and Chiva, in the interior of the province, were already sending a tremendous torrent of water downstream that was going to be unbearable. Minutes before and a few kilometers away, in towns like Catarroja, Paiporta or Alfafar, where it was not even raining, people were taking the car carelessly along secondary roads to go to Ikea, pick up the children from after-school or return to their homes in that southern part of the metropolitan area, the most affected and where about 200,000 people live (there are 800,000 in the capital). In a matter of minutes, the worst flood in living memory was going to overwhelm them. A lot of rain, a lot of time going down ravines that cross a very populated area. You couldn’t stop the rain or the rivers, of course. Just clear its deadly course of people.

The heroine of the sheet

When the general alert message reached the population, the waterspout was flooding cars and houses and putting the survivors of a catastrophe that has yet to be quantified to the limit: those who were able to climb to roofs or high floors and those who had the instinct to get out of the car, like Antonio. Or like a girl perched on a blind who has become a symbol after managing to climb the sheets that the neighbors on the first floor threw at her, a heroic act that was followed by an explosion of applause from the balconies. Again the balconies, again “as if it were a war,” as Rubén, who lives near Paiporta, said.

Many more citizens were stranded without food, water or electricity, clinging to a ledge and hoping to be found at night, unable to use their cell phones due to lack of coverage or battery. Seniors in wheelchairs trapped in the residence. Cries for help that suddenly died out on the V-30 near the La Torre neighborhood, with drivers trying to hold on to a median. A couple of gentlemen who couldn’t leave home. Another who was taken by the storm when he was trying to protect the door. A mother and daughter who died together in L’Alcúdia.

The Military Emergency Unit (UME), which depends on the Ministry of Defense, was “pre-alerted” at 8:36 p.m., as the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, admitted in his first appearance at 9:30 p.m.: “We don’t know what “We are going to need it because we lack information due to the oversaturation of lines.” Which lines he refers to has not been clear, nor has any further explanation been given for any oversaturation between communications between State security forces. At that time the water had already taken the lives of dozens of people and hundreds were waiting for rescue. “Where it has not been possible to reach it is because it is not possible, it is not due to lack of means,” Mazón insisted in his second and last appearance, at twelve-thirty in the morning. Indeed, it was too late to access the natural disaster area. According to press releases posted online, the body that manages this type of disaster, the Emergency Coordination Center (Cecopi), did not convene until the day of the tragedy at five in the afternoon.

Incomprehensibly, because the same government that carried out all the measures on Tuesday evening was warning in the morning of the imminent dangers. The Júcar Hydrographic Confederation had posted photos and information about overflows on Twitter. At 12:20, the Emergències account itself, which depends on the Generalitat Valenciana and is in the hands of the PP councilor Salomé Pradas – she assumed these powers after Vox left the government in July – issued a “special hydrological alert notice in the municipalities of the Poyo ravine area.” This overflow has been one of the deadliest and has claimed families and homes. It is not yet known what coordination was done with the municipalities. Three minutes later, that same regional government account posted a video in which it can be seen, at 1:00 p.m., that the flow in that ravine is about to burst.

The president continued with his agenda and at 1:45 p.m. he met at the Palau de la Generalitat with the social agents. He tweeted that the storm would subside at 6 p.m. and would move towards Cuenca. Hours later, when everything is mud and the dead begin to appear by the dozens, Mazón deletes the tweet. That same morning, the Consell spokesperson dedicated just four minutes to updating storm data and alerts in her Tuesday appearance, after the Govern Council. There is a cold drop, but the competent department is not treating it as a priority at the moment. Until seven hours later.

The calls began on WhatsApp, Twitter, and on the radio: “Please help, I can’t find my brother.” “Urgent notice: a group of people at this point cannot get out of the car.” “My friend has been trapped by the water, clinging to a plant and her car has been swept away by the current, she is alone and does not have much coverage.” 112, by then, was doing what it could trying to respond to a multitude of calls. For many of those who asked for help, it gave an error or miscommunicated. Citizens set out to look for their relatives in other ways. “If you can’t contact the first time, insist,” Mazón said in writing about that official telephone number. There are those who couldn’t get in touch all night. In command of 112, Emilio Argüeso, who set up Ciudadanos in Valencia and now a leader very close to Mazón, who 24 hours after the flood had not appeared publicly.

The wild and uncontrolled flood that drowned drivers and families in their homes, caught completely unexpectedly, was viewed with the general disbelief of a majority of Valencians who had not even had to take their umbrellas that day and had not seen anything too serious in the news: only the regional public channel had taken seriously the warning issued five days ago by experts and Aemet itself and was still live. “If this had happened in Madrid it would be on all the news,” some outraged citizens wrote on social networks. It is a reasonable doubt. Another would be what would have happened if, instead of inland points with highly populated flood zones in its path, the torrent had fallen in the capital or near the sea. Or what would have happened if the Valencian Emergency Unit had existed, which was eliminated as soon as the PP won the regional elections when they realized that it was “an occurrence.”