Victims of Valencia flood: ‘I thought we would end up in the sea’

It’s 20 minutes past midnight. Beatriz Garrote, former president of the association of victims of the 2006 metro accident in Valencia, writes on her X profile: “We are stuck on the [highway] V-30. We can see the river rising and we’re worried. Can you give us any indication?”

Garrote was returning home from work in the Valencian town of Torrent and at around 8 p.m. she was trapped by water along with hundreds of other drivers for nearly seven hours on a stretch of the Valencia ring road. “I passed the first exit, which was Paiporta, but it was closed because they told us that the town was flooded and we couldn’t get out through there. The next thing I knew I was stopped 200 meters further on, very close to the [high-speed railway] AVE bridge. The car got stuck and suddenly the two lanes closest to the exits of the towns began to flood,” she recalled hours later.

“When I saw the water a centimeter below me, I was terrified. I didn’t know where it was coming from or what was happening. The water started to rise very quickly, and after 10 minutes it was halfway up the car’s wheels. Some volunteers told us to turn around, but there was no way out,” she says. They couldn’t go in either direction. A Civil Guard patrolman even suggested pulling them out with ropes, over the AVE train bridge. Nerves grew among those trapped when the water level rose in the new riverbed, which runs parallel to the V-30.

The stretch of road where Garrote was located was flooded in half an hour. “There was a terrible flood. We were trapped, we saw no way out and we had to cross a very strong current of water. It was a critical situation. I felt that in half an hour, we could have ended up in the sea,” she adds, still in shock. Cars had been overturned and others had fallen into the new riverbed.

It was an apocalyptic situation, Garrote says. “We didn’t know if we were doing the right thing or not, if we were going deeper into the lion’s den,” she adds while remembering Trini and Laura, two other people with whom she shared hours of anguish and uncertainty.

“I was separated from them when we were trying to get out and I hope they are okay,” she says. Local buses, which spent the night transporting those affected, took her to a shelter. She then took refuge in a friend’s house in Valencia and by 10 a.m. Wednesday morning she still hadn’t been able to return home.

Garrote is one of thousands of people affected by the floods. At least 70 people have died in the province of Valencia, as confirmed by the Integrated Operational Coordination Center of the Ministry of the Interior, which collects information from various security and emergency services. In addition, an 88-year-old woman died in the Cuenca town of Mira and there are fears for the lives of six people missing since yesterday in Letur, (Albacete). The images are devastating.

Águeda Serrano, director of the Viticulture school in Requena (Valencia), says that she spent the night with 25 students and that they are all fine. The rain caught them giving classes, and although the building was not flooded, they did see “a staircase turn into a waterfall, which was scary.” “We have never experienced this, not us or our elders,” Serrano says.

They have been left without telephone and internet connection, but they still have electricity, in the aftermath of a weather event that few thought would prove so catastrophic. The provincial government even sent four workers — plumbers and electricians — to carry out some repairs at the center. They were warned that they could not return to Valencia, but they decided to try and go home anyway.

“Two of them were rescued on the road by a truck driver, when the water started entering their car.” There is no news of the other two. “We want to assume that they have no coverage,” says Serrano.

There has also been no news of their administrator, who left by train. In many areas, there is still no cell coverage, increasing the anguish of those who cannot contact their loved ones.

With reporting from Rebeca Carranco

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