San Lorenzo, a mirror for Valencia: What comes after the mud?

PalmThe sky is cloudy in San Lorenzo And before the floodwaters are unloaded, Mateu Quina carries a sturdy, heavy piece of wood from the farmyard, fitting precisely onto the rails installed along the sides of his front door. It's not simply the sloping table typical of village houses, designed to channel water away from the street. There's a premeditated, homemade engineering behind this system, which Mateu installs almost automatically. He wants to prevent everything in his home from being buried under mud again if the torrent overflows, if the water surges like it did on that fateful October 9, 2018. That afternoon, he went upstairs with his wife and daughter. As they watched the rising water, they heard cars crashing against the now-protected door. Until one of them flung the door wide open. "The blast came strong and hit the neighbor's wall. In our house, all the furniture ended up at the back of the dining room. We stayed upstairs from six in the evening until one in the afternoon the next day without moving, until they came to get us," he recounts.

Mateu was born 82 years ago in this very house and remembers how, as a child, his parents would always say, "We need to make this house taller." The problem has always been here, but Mateu didn't pay much attention to it. "I'd never experienced anything like that," he says about the 2018 flash flood, which claimed the lives of thirteen people and plunged the town into mourning. Tragedy in ValenciaThe San Lorenzo earthquake, with at least 216 dead, has revived memories for those who survived. "It frightens and distresses us to see it on television," Quina says.

"It was a tsunami"

Across from Mateo's house, right in the epicenter of the flash flood, stands the San Lorenzo Glassworks. Aina Sánchez, the owner, and Maria Magdalena Rosselló, an employee, sit at their computers. "We found the old ones in the back of our neighbor's house," Sánchez points out, highlighting the magnitude of the disaster. "Nothing was left here. It was terrible. The panic of seeing a river flowing through the town hasn't left us. It was a tsunami that came. We've deleted the videos because we don't want to remember it," Rosselló confesses. But what happened in Valencia has held a mirror up to them. Both describe scenes like those in Paiporta or Chiva; they recall the story of the woman who saw the disaster coming and, step by step, climbed to the upper floor with her walker; those who screamed for help on their rooftops; and the nicknames of those who died, swept away by the water. "It wasn't raining here to cause such a mess. It all came suddenly," he continues, using another analogy with the Levante region.

Again, the mirror: "Your mind relives everything. I haven't slept for three days, and I don't even live there, but I've seen it here and I know what it's like. The images from Valencia anger me. Knowing that the alert was issued too late. Here, nobody issued an alert either. In this sense, everything is exactly the same."

The day after the tragedy, Maria Magdalena came from her house to Forávila with her tractor and a front-end loader. "I didn't go down for days. Then I got sick, with a fever of 40 degrees Celsius. Exhausted. Everything came out. You wouldn't believe what we were hauling out with the tractor: pigs, chickens, and dogs covered in gasoline and oil, very harmful things. I filled a regular truck seven or eight times: Everything was sticking like crazy. Everything was sticking. People looked at me and it broke my heart, but it had to be done," she recounts.

Blackish-green sky

At 5:30 p.m. on October 9, 2018, the power was flickering on and off at Aina's glass factory, as it was throughout the village. The phone lines started failing, and the sky was a greenish-black color unlike anything Maria Magdalena had ever seen. They decided to close up shop and leave. The intermittent power outages saved their lives. The next morning, they called Sánchez and told him, "The glass factory is gone." Everything had been destroyed. "I cried and cried, but when I arrived, I walked down these three streets"—she points to them—"and I thought, 'You've lost a business; the others, their homes; so that's that.'"

A few meters from the glass shop is Lali Cardona's tobacco shop. Opposite it stands Amparo Sard's sculpture of hands, a gesture of gratitude for the help received during the flash flood. And just beyond that is the street where Lali's husband reversed the car to save them both from drowning. "Suddenly, the water was up to the car's headlights, and I cried out, 'What is this?' He reacted because he knows how water behaves in these situations. He went against the current like James Bond. I would have stayed still, and the water would have swept me away. I'm sure of it. It was a matter of seconds." When he returned to the shop, his business was gone, as was Aina's. "It was like a war zone. I felt a physical sensation of nausea. My body and mind shut down. I lost my memory. I couldn't even remember the price of a pack of Marlboros," she confesses.

Since the Valencian catastrophe, she has stayed away from the media outlets that document the disaster. "I haven't been able to watch any of the images. I would start crying from the rage and helplessness. I know I wouldn't be able to bear it. Just thinking about it makes me very nervous. We've made donations, but we can't face it again. I don't even want to think about what awaits those poor people. We're very close to Valencia, and it's not comparable. But here, the help arrived suddenly. However, the town has been scarred, but we have to learn to live with this," she explains.

Financial aid

The parallels between San Lorenzo and Valencia diverge in the handling of the tragedy. "Before we even grasped what had happened, they were already talking to us about financial aid. The City Council opened a one-stop shop to process everything we needed, and with the contribution from the regional government, everything was covered. It was very well organized," says Cardona, who received around €100,000 from everyone. In two months, his tobacco shop was reopened. "I always say that the flash flood brought out the best and worst in people. We'll never forget the solidarity of the people, but some stole bicycles and watches," he says.

At the glass factory, the authorities also acted swiftly. "I was anti-politics. I didn't even know who Francina Armengol was, but she came here with engineers and they did a lot of work on everything. I thought they would only cover the basics. I was very honest. I don't know if anyone took advantage. Of course, I didn't, but my business was left as it was. January 2nd," Sánchez recounts. It was the same for private individuals. Between home insurance and regional aid, Mateu Quina was able to restore his house to its pre-flood condition.

Flood zone

In Sant Llorenç, the most dangerous streets during a downpour are marked as flood zones. Parking is prohibited when a weather alert is in effect. According to residents, the municipal police warn them of the prohibition. Among the measures taken in the wake of the disaster, a sensor measures the flow of the torrent, and an alarm is activated if it becomes dangerous. However, according to Lali Cardona, there is still a lack of public awareness and education regarding these measures. "There are a lot of people here who don't listen. It's a matter of education. If they tell us we're on orange alert, what does that mean if you don't even do a drill on how to react? If you don't communicate the messages properly to the public, it's useless. When the alarm went off two years ago at one in the morning, people just fled. What should be done is to get things done. A Russian man asked us if a bomb had fallen, and another was asking if it was a bank. Nobody knew what to do. The Sant Llorenç Town Hall, for its part, has not responded to ARA Baleares' requests to explain the prevention systems in the municipality."

Clean the torrents

"What have they done after what happened? They've cleared the streams so they don't clog up, but even then there's no agreement because they say it might not be good to clear them too much, because then the flow would be even stronger. They also took over some garages so the water could run freely," says Aina Sánchez, who, in her own way, is taking measures in response to the announcement. She dismantles the computers and, once the threat has passed, reconnects them. "We're still digging out mud," reveals Maria Magdalena. Lali agrees and moves the only piece of furniture she managed to save from the tobacco shop. "Look," she says, moving it a few centimeters, and there's the dry earth turned to dust. "No matter how much time passes. There's always mud." Mateo already has what he considers important upstairs. "Well, of course, everything delicate is tucked away," he confirms as he slides the wooden plank along the rails. He loads it onto one side and returns it to the yard. The sun has come out in Sant Llorenç.