Rising from the Rubble: Thousands Unite in Valencia to Rebuild and Restore a City Shattered by Devastation

ALFAFAR, Spain.

The Spanish government announced that they will send 10,000 extra soldiers and police to search for the missing and distribute aid in areas damaged by the floods, the “biggest natural disaster in recent history,” which leaving at least 211 dead.

Volunteers to help clear the rubble and search for deaths continue to arrive from all over Spain. Photo: Reuters

Submerged up to their waists, several firefighters shake the dark water where wood, sticks and debris float. They are looking for possible victims in a tunnel between two now-destroyed towns near the Spanish city of Valencia, where a wave of mud swept everything away four days ago.

“All the basements are flooded, I understand now that when they start to remove the water there will be a lot of deaths,” explained Javier López, shaking off his mud-stained hands.

He turned around in time to see a “cascade” of water entering the tunnel next to his house, the lower floor of which has now been destroyed. Minutes earlier, a colleague had told him that the nearby Benetúser, where he has his company, was flooding.

“The company, the office, the warehouse, the vehicles, the cars we had here on the street, everything is lost,” he said dejectedly. Several friends are now helping him remove the mud from the lower part of his house, where a brown streak measuring more than a meter reminds him of how far the water reached on a terrible Tuesday afternoon on his destroyed kitchen.

“We are all in shock,” he acknowledges about the state of this populated area of the metropolitan area of Spain’s third city.

Despite the relentless work of residents and volunteers, who have arrived by the thousands from all over Spain, traces of the disaster appear at every step. A woman is screaming in the middle of the street and neighbors are running to help her. He has just seen how the flood has destroyed his business.

Pyramids of cars block the route on some streets, with sections that are inaccessible. In others, objects rendered useless by mud are piled between the pavements, while neighbors continue to remove mud relentlessly.

“Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of us, because on behalf of the authorities, there is no one,” laments 66-year-old Estrella Cáceres.

Activity is frenzied on the ground floor of what has been his home for 40 years. Friends and family are emptying unusable rooms and trying to save memories of this house where Estrella was with her grandchildren when she was surprised by the flood.

In front of the only pharmacy that remains open in Alfafar, dozens of neighbors line up. From here, everyday life is still very far away and the residents of this devastated area do not know when they will stop counting losses.

“I know of people who are dead and missing, many,” said Charo de la Rosa, while waiting to buy medicine for her parents.

“They are neighbors, they are people you love, you grew up with them (…) People you will never see again, and the difficult death we had could them, and so cruelly, to have been avoided,” this hospitality worker laments.