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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/nov/20/valencia-storms-iberian-peninsula-this-is-climate-breakdown>
"I had been working with my husband, Miguel Carpio, for over 30 years. We would
spend the day together, we would meet at work. With our daughter, Sara, and her
boyfriend, we went everywhere – the gym, the dentist, the hairdresser – as a
happy and close-knit family.
In my house, there wasn’t a pair of trousers, a dress or a sock that we didn’t
buy together. In my family, there was never a day without an “I love you” or a
hug.
On 29 October 2024, we left work at half past four in the afternoon and arrived
home at around five to our apartment on the fourth floor of a building in
Benetússer, on the outskirts of Valencia. Despite working for the regional
government, we had received no warning about the rains that were falling in the
interior of the Valencian community.
But my daughter – a nurse working at La Fe hospital on the intensive care ward
– was scared. At half past six, she asked me from the balcony if the town could
get flooded. I told her it was impossible. I’m 60 years old and I had never
seen it flood. My elders had always led me to believe that it was impossible.
Still, as a civil servant who knows the system, I knew that if there was any
danger, the authorities would contact us via WhatsApp or text. I made her look
at her mobile phone. She had no messages, no alerts. We asked my husband, who
also had nothing.
I tried to reassure her, saying: “Look, they haven’t warned us about anything,
so nothing is going to happen.” My husband and I continued doing things at
home. She stayed on the balcony, worried, and at exactly quarter past seven in
the evening, she cried: “Mum, Dad, come, come.” We looked out and saw a very
low tongue of brown water, less than 15cm deep.
The first thing we thought to do was to take the car on to the street in case
water seeped into the underground garage. My husband went downstairs and my
daughter, who drives a separate car, joined him. I stayed on the balcony and
called my sister, who was in Valencia city, to tell her not to come over that
night.
But not long after they went down, I heard a strange noise in the background.
It was as if something heavy was being dragged on asphalt. I looked to the
right and suddenly saw a huge wave carrying a wall of reeds. And that scared
me, because right afterwards, water started coming in, very strong and with
high pressure. It was dragging containers, and soon it was dragging cars. It
lifted up all the cars that were parked on the street and started to carry them
away. I hung up on my sister and immediately the power went out. We had no
electricity.
I went down the stairs from the fourth floor to the garage, but I stopped at
what we call the street courtyard, where the water was already 2.5 metres deep.
I still had one more floor to get to the garage, but I couldn’t reach it. So I
ran back up the stairs and called my daughter’s boyfriend. The two have an app
on their phones so they can know where the other is at any time. He tried to
find her, and at nine minutes past eight in the evening, he told me it was
impossible: “We’ve all tried, all our friends. I can’t locate her.”
I had been hoping that her mobile phone had fallen into the water, that she had
lost it, that she and my husband had been safe in a higher area, that they had
been able to get out of the garage. But they hadn’t. Before the Valencian
regional government had even raised the alarm, the two of them and a neighbour
had drowned. It wasn’t until late on the night of the 31st – with the help of a
water-pumping truck and an expert team of divers – that they found them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
