AN IRISH TEACHER living close to Valencia says the city is like a “ghost town” after devastating floods which left 95 people dead.
Torrential rains that began earlier this week sparked the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century and the deadliest such disaster in the country since 1973.
Three days of mourning began today and the death toll is expected to rise.
Emergency services carried out 200 rescues on the ground and 70 aerial evacuations yesterday, said Valencia regional government chief Carlos Mazon.
Heavy rain between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning resulted in walls of rushing water that turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away cars, people and anything else in its path.
Waterford-native Susan Boyce, a 25-year-old teacher living in a suburb outside Valencia, told The Journal that there was “no sense of any urgency” on Tuesday.
“It was a mere yellow warning on Tuesday morning,” she added.
Boyce, who moved to Spain in August, said “everyone continued on as normal, because we expected it to be a yellow warning and that only”.
An alert sent by the civil protection service urging residents of Valencia not to leave their homes wasn’t issued until 8.15pm on Tuesday night, by which time a lot of damage had already been caused by the flooding.
“It was almost like something out of the film The Purge, where all our phones went off at the same time,” said Boyce.
“I was home watching the thunderstorm and jumped off the couch because of the sound my phone made.
“The alert urged everyone to stay inside until further notice, and if you live near a canal or river, to take high ground, but we couldn’t leave to get supplies or water at that point.”
Boyce said she’s lucky to live in a suburb outside Valencia and on the third floor of an apartment complex.
“There’s a good few fallen trees outside our apartment, and the roads are muddy, but it’s nothing compared to the damage 20 minutes away from where we are.”
But today she had to make a journey to Valencia to get water because the water in her apartment has been cut off due to the flooding.
On her trip to Valencia, Boyce said the roads were extremely muddy and that it was extremely difficult to walk on them.
She added that there are a lot of dog parks in the city but that “they’re flooded and are almost like a swimming pool”.
“Although it hasn’t rained since early yesterday morning, there’s still a lot of water and debris.”
She added that while many roads are open, others, such as the road to the airport, are still flooded and have many cars piled up on them.
“It’s still very much like a ghost town, it’s very eerie,” said Boyce.
“It was around two hours to get into town to get water and all the supermarket shelves are completely empty, like they were at points during the Covid lockdowns.”
The school Boyce teaches at closed yesterday and today, and was already due to be closed tomorrow as a result of All Saints Day, which is a public holiday in Spain.
“The school has just told us they will be in touch over the weekend to let us know about Monday,” said Boyce.
Meanwhile, she said that it’s “currently dry and sunny, but it’s really weird to see that kind of weather”.
“You see the sun and usually the city is packed with people sitting outside for lunch,” said Boyce, “but it’s completely the opposite now, it’s like a ghost town.”
She added that one of her colleagues had to abandon her car amid the flooding due to a collapsed bridge in the town of Paiporta.
Pareix que la riuada s'acaba d'emportar un pont a Paiporta. Impressionant! Ens arriba el vídeo per WhatsApp i desconeixem l'autor.
— AVAMET (@avamet) October 29, 2024
Molta precaució a les rambles, rius i barrancs. A Paiporta no plou però l'aigua els arriba de més cap amunt. pic.twitter.com/LPWrqFtdCQ
The bridge collapsed into the river beneath and Boyce said her colleague had to “leave her car where it was and wade through the river to try and get home”.
Another teacher she works with has been helping neighbours with their flooded basements and has been sending Boyce pictures of the damage, with water levels reaching around 50 centimetres in some cases.
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