The DANA that came with force in the province of Valencia on Tuesday he left crowd of people trapped with their vehicles on V-30 when they tried to return to their homes. Among them was Lisa, a young woman resident in La Torre de Valencia who lived the “anguish” and “tension” of having to take shelter for nearly six hours in a truck with dozens of people, including children, and having to make his way through the water to get to safety.
“It was an uncontrolled situation. We felt like we were alone there and that no one could help us in no way,” she lamented when recounting what happened. Lisa finished her workday in Quart de Poblet (Valencia) around 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday and took the car to return to La Torre, a journey that normally lasts ten minutes. “My mother had told me that Chiva and Utiel were flooding, that in Buñol it was raining a lot, but in Quart de Poblet or in Valencia it hardly rained all day,” he says and He didn’t think he would find any complications..
When the Civil Protection alert sounded on his mobile phone, he was already on the road; Its exit was cut off and the La Torre area was beginning to flood. After advancing a few meters, he began to see vehicles traveling in the opposite direction and another driver warned him to turn around because “everything was flooded there.” “We all start to turn aroundbut there was so much traffic at that time that we had no escape. At the moment when we all wanted to get out, we got stuck and suddenly I began to see how the water from the fields began to flood the road,” he explained.
From then on, “in a matter of seconds,” he began to check how the water level was rising until he reached the car door. Given the speed with which he was moving, he decided to get on the back of a truck, “which is what people were saying.” Inside the vehicle there were refugees “at least 30 people“, between adults and three children, along with two dogs.
“There were cars that suddenly you no longer saw”
Thus, Lisa has detailed that the first part of the night “was of anguish and great fear“ for this situation; because the water level began to rise and “there were cars that suddenly you couldn’t see anymore.” “Nobody could get to you. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to get out of there,” recalls the young woman, who says her “body was shaking” and “they were praying that it wouldn’t rain.”
Lisa said she tried to call 112 and could not communicate with the service. He then contacted other services Firefighters and Police without success. The young woman estimates that they remained in the truck between five and six hoursuntil they calmed down “a little” because they began to realize that the water level had dropped.
“The river looked like the sea”
Finally, one of the people sheltered in the truck decided to get out and walk in the direction of Benetússer, where he saw people walking. He returned to the vehicle to warn the rest that “there was a way out”. “I wasn’t going to wait any longer, because I already saw that I couldn’t get out on my own, I didn’t know if I was going to get out of that situation,” he commented.
When they left the vehicles behind, with the water halfway up to their knees, they were in an open field. “What you had next to you was the river that looked like the sea of the strength he carried. So we were afraid in the sense that if someone fell, stumbled, you couldn’t do anything, you were swept away by the current. It was quite tense, but we all wanted to get out of there,” he explained.
Finally, they arrived at the bridge that goes to La Torre, at the San Vicente exit, where there were civil protection personnel and firefighters giving directions and helping to cross. And finally she was able to leave the road, a bus took her to the center set up in La Petxina and she ended up arriving home thanks to a close friend. It so happens that your neighborhood is one of the most affected of the city.
However, Lisa Thank you for being safe and not having lost anything of value.. Added to the initial disbelief is now “a lot of sadness for the people who were not able to get out of there,” and concern about how all the people he was with in the truck could have ended up.
From there, has moved on to anxiety and a “claustrophobic” feeling. “I’m afraid of staying in a place with no way out” and “there are times when you’re fine, but others when you start to think and you feel the fear again and you don’t want to go out. You don’t want it to rain. Pray every day that it doesn’t rain.” rain,” he lamented.