Paiporta swept away

On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 29th heavy rains started to fall across Spain’s south and eastern provinces. The rapid and torrential downpour affected 78 municipalities including towns in Andalusia, Murcia and Castilla La Mancha, but it was the Valencia region that bore the brunt.

Though the rains are expected every Autumn and have in the past been severe, locals say this was the worst in living memory. As of November 13, 223 deaths had been reported in Spain (215 in the Community of Valencia, 7 in Castilla La Mancha and 1 in Andalusia), while more than 23 people remain missing, according to the Spanish Government. The rains, known by the acronym DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos or isolated depression at high levels) fell fast and in unbelievable quantities, including in some areas more than a year’s worth in 24 hours: 600.2 l/m² in Chiva, and a record breaking 771 l/m² in Turís. DANA rains occur when the still warm Mediterranean sea surface air meets cold polar winds resulting in the creation of huge rain clouds, intense downpours and flash flooding. 

In Valencia’s highlands brown waves of ferocious waters filled the usually dry riverways and ravines, then careened down towards the floodplains taking cars, buildings and people with them. The destructive flooding carved a path straight through the towns of Catarroja, Alfafar, Sedaví, Massanassa, Picanya and Paiporta among others, decimating everything it came into contact with. Of the deaths associated with the DANA, more than a quarter were from Paiporta. The 24,000 residents of the low-lying town just 8 kilometers south of Valencia City had no warning as a tsunami of water swelled over the Barranco del Poyo ravine walls and burst through every ground floor home and business, transforming living rooms, kitchens, shops and garages into deathly water tanks. Those who lived through the record flooding are scarred with the memories of a dark, wet night of survival and despair.

Agustina Zahonero del Río, 61, moved to Paiporta with her daughter, Ana Sánchez Zahonero, 26, four years ago. She had been attracted to the rental price of a beautiful old Valencian home decorated with stained glass windows and colorful tiles. When it rained heavily in the past she would expect a little standing water but by 6.30pm on Tuesday 29th as she and her daughter braced their front door against the water pressure building behind it, they knew this was different. 

The women panicked as the door was eventually knocked down and the river forcibly entered their home, rising to almost 3 meters. “We clung to the furniture, floated on a mattress for a long time, then on the sofa until it sank, then on the other sofa. We were like that for five hours in complete darkness.” They tried to swim to a tree in the back patio, as upstairs neighbors yelled down to them but their path was blocked. As Valencia’s regional government issued an emergency flood warning text message, Agustina was clinging to a chandelier in her foyer, the freezing waters starting to numb her body into hypothermia. 

She could feel herself slipping towards unconsciousness and even started to say goodbye to Ana, apologizing that she couldn’t hold it off any longer. As her daughter yelled at her to stay awake they heard Manu, a worker from the law office next door, using a small hammer to create a hole in the wall separating the buildings. Once it was big enough he was able to pull them both to safety.

When Agustina was taken upstairs she was given a hot shower, “the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve never felt anything like it.” She and Ana stayed there for the night, and when they woke up the next day, they saw their life submerged. Agustina describes the worst part of the ordeal not as her brush with death or the loss of material belongings but “fearing something would happen to my daughter, fearing she would see me die. And the realization of the type of people governing us and that we’re dependent on them.”

Agustina’s eldest daughter, Gema Robledo Zahonero, 32, came home from Denmark to support her. She believes her mother and sister not only remain in a state of shock a week later, but that they and many others in Paiporta have developed an attachment to the site of so much pain. “For me, I really think they have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. They are comfortable in their tragedy because it is more comfortable than acknowledging they have lost literally everything.” Left effectively, with only the clothes on her back, Agustina now begins the painful process of lodging insurance claims and applying for government aid. The first question she is asked is whether she has her paper receipts. A Gofundme crowdfunding page has been set up to help her rebuild.

Antonio León, 71, has been living in Paiporta for 60 years and has seen many DANA events. He has a wooden plank he sometimes places between the street’s gutter and his corrugated iron garage door to stop water getting in. On the night of Tuesday 29th he did the same, thinking it wouldn’t reach higher than usual. He and his wife were in their garage when the water started rapidly rising. “The water just started coming in as if it was pouring from underneath. It rose and kept rising—the parked car here was lifted, and it hit the door, breaking the glass, which cut my wife.” The two realized they were trapped and using a ladder climbed from the back patio onto a low hanging roof. From there, their neighbor, Alberto Sorni Belencoso, 34, helped them into his home to safety. “If the water had risen any higher, they wouldn’t have made it. Where they were, it was impossible to survive,” Alberto said.

The cook and his family had been watching the waters rise from their balcony upstairs. “In just five minutes our role shifted from warning people to trying to save them. That was in the first hour, by the second hour, with water all around, we were watching people, cars full of people passing by, and there was nothing we could do.” The next few hours were dark as they realized surviving would be impossible for many. Alberto describes the next week as like living through a war. “There are countless stories even worse.”

So changed is the energy of the town that he now sees no future for himself in it, “I feel that the dead make me want to leave here now, I feel the death in the streets.” For those who have no choice but to stay, he hopes things will change, "Spain is not a country prepared for these kinds of disasters, but we have plenty of military personnel for when these things happen. Yet, they choose to spend more money on politics instead." His neighbor Antonio is equally distrustful of Valencia’s leaders. He speaks of greed and corruption as he walks around his garage. On top of losing everything that was in storage, Antonio’s prized classic car, a 1969 Seat 1500 Saloon, was destroyed beyond affordable repair. Tears well as his eyes drift from his beloved car’s mud-stained upholstery to the damage across the room, “All of it gone within six hours.” 

A car, debris, furniture and reeds block Sant Josep Street in Paiporta while volunteers carry out cleaning tasks. © Pablo Tosco for Sonda Internacional.

Musicians Amparo Ribes Montoro, 58 and Manuel, 59 have known each other since they were seven years old. They grew up, got married and had two sons together all within the bounds of Paiporta. After the flood, the town they know so well is now unrecognizable. “The night was awful for me and my husband. The water started to go up and up and we decided to go upstairs. We took the ID cards, we took the dog and nothing else, because it's better to live, we have life, that's the important thing.” As they fled upstairs the water broke through their front door, filling the downstairs with mud, water and sediment. The power was cut, their phones lost coverage and they sat in darkness for hours listening to the screams of neighbors muffled under the sound of rushing water. One young man next door was trapped, clinging to a pillar and no one was able to help him, “He was screaming all night for help, ‘I can't take it anymore, I can't take it anymore’ and in the end when the water started to go down at 2 or 3 in the morning, the boy was saved, but all night listening, ‘I'm falling’ and everyone was telling him to hold on. It was such a terrible experience, but he was saved.”

A week after the flood Amparo moves at a frenetic pace, the adrenaline clearly hasn’t left her system. She calls to her neighbor over the fence, asks how she is and laughs while they both wash laundry in buckets. She then switches to sweeping, then moving bags, then wiping down furniture. She, like all of her neighbors, prefers to stay in the cleaning frenzy rather than contemplate the future. “They told us Paiporta is the only town that does not have any store or business left, Paiporta is devastated, there is nothing.” She knows when the clean up is done and they are left without cars and amenities a new reality will set in. Where before they had everything in the town, now they will have to venture out for what they need. “A kilometer away from here in Valencia life is normal. Nothing has happened, everyone is drinking coffee on the terraces,” she says. “We will have to move as we can, by bus, and go to stores and return with the bags.” Despite the bleak prediction the couple are intending to stay. In the immediate future all Amparo hopes for is a microwave and later a fridge and washing machine. 

Around the corner from their home is the local music conservatory where Amparo and Manuel first met. Both are members of the Primitive Band of Paiporta. Inside the grand theater the instruments, stage and seating are in a sad state. A professor, José Morales, 42, is helping to clean, but he says it will take years for the private association to rebuild and replace what’s been lost. “We are talking about almost €30,000 for the piano. Yes we have insurance but we have equipment that might be 30 or 40 years old. They’re high-quality instruments, but they’re old, and we don’t have documentation for them anymore—no invoices, no papers, nothing.” His trained ear had never encountered the sounds he heard the night of the flood, “The force was terrifying—you could hear the water roaring through the entire town, just terrifying. It was like if you had a faucet with extremely high pressure right next to your ear. It was brutal, just brutal.” He, like many, is angry and exhausted. As he speaks about the many failures he felt the emergency response had, his voice gradually becomes a strained yell that echoes from the concert hall’s stage into the dark, empty gallery. 

Ana Sirvent, 46, lives in a first floor apartment above her Jijonenca ice cream store close to the ravine in Paiporta. As well as working in her store, she looks after her mother and father who have partial paralysis and advanced Alzheimer's respectively. She and her family witnessed the worst of the flooding as waves rose to the foot of their home, “Within half an hour, the water was over 2 meters high. Cars were hitting against the balcony. I called out to the neighbors; everyone was at work except one young guy, 20 years old, my daughter who’d just turned 17 that night, and me.” Between the three of them they managed to get her parents up to the third floor where they spent the night without electricity or phone reception. “The water kept rising, and the noise was deafening—crashes, because we later found out walls were falling. We couldn’t see anything, it was like a horror movie. Then when the water began to recede, we started to see everything.” 

As the days after the flood ticked by, she and her family remained without water, electricity or a front door. Like many she relied on the help of volunteers to bring food and patrol the streets from looters. Her parents' immobility was amplified by the lack of services, “We had been washing them with wipes. My father can’t eat solid food anymore. Thankfully all the neighbors brought me baby food, and those, cold, is what I have been feeding him with, because I had nothing else. I had nothing else.”

At 46 she will now begin to reconstruct a life the water took away. “We only have this urge to clean, clean, and clean. I think once this all ends, this town will turn into a ghost town. There isn’t a single business left standing, no shop, nothing.” She intends to look for work outside of Paiporta because reopening her business seems unfeasible, “I’d need over 100,000 euros, that neither the government nor the insurance companies will give me. I can’t take out more loans. On top of losing everything, I’d be going further into debt. I don’t think I have any more strength left.”

On Carrer Luis Vives, one of the most inundated streets, José “Pepe” Martínez, 60, sweeps mud from the home he was born in and has lived all his life. On the night of the DANA his sister had called him to tell him the ravine had overflowed. He ran out of the house to see for himself something he believed to be impossible - a mistake many made fatally. “All of a sudden it was up to my knees. And then up to my waist, but the force of the current pushed me and pulled me. I grabbed a car and from there I had the window in front of me and I thought: 'If I let go and it takes me bad luck, goodbye Pepe'” He called for help and to his relief, neighbors were able to drag him into their home through a street level window. He knows he was one of the lucky ones. 

Pepe stands in what was once his living room and reaches up to the flood’s water line stained onto the wall. It’s over 2 meters high and he can only just reach it. Across from him an interior wall has been partially knocked out, above it, covered in mud and hanging askew, is a framed picture of Valencia’s patroness, Mare de Déu dels Desamparats, the Holy Mother of the forsaken and helpless. Pepe may have escaped with his life, but as the waters receded they took everything he had with them. “It will not be the same as before because it was all furnished, all the furniture was made by my father, all very nice, very old, so it will not be the same as before.” 

He exhales with resignation while crisscrossing the foyer cleaning. Someone has used their hands to smear the Valencian word ‘Ànim’ (‘Keep going’ in English) across his wall with mud. The house’s giant ornate wooden doors lay on their side against the wall, splattered and useless. Until they are back on their hinges it’s not safe for Pepe to sleep in his home, adding to the insecurity of the moment. Once they are he is determined to move on, “As long as the doors are put up and closed, then little by little the cleaning will be done."

Scientists are still working to clarify how much climate change influenced this flooding event, but they’re certain rising temperatures are increasing the risk of extreme events and have already impacted the behavior and unpredictability of the hydrological cycle. As well as the necessary audits of Spain’s emergency response protocols, parts of the population now hope focus will turn to planning and building adaption as well as education so future disasters can be avoided and lives can be spared. In Paiporta the unforgettable brown color of the mud is slowly being erased, the towers of wrecked cars are being towed and the town seems less chaotic. But like the lives of the families affected by the floods, the clocks remain frozen at the moment the waters came through and swept everything away.

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