Teresa bursts into tears when she sees the Lieutenant Cristian Lacalle through the door. She is 85 years old and has reduced mobility, and she was trapped in her house when the flood devastated the streets of chiva. It was Lacalle, along with two other companions, who broke down the door of the house and carried her out, down a narrow staircase, while the house was flooded with water. “Without him I wouldn’t be alive,” she says while giving him kisses.
Lacalle and Corporal Mújica, of the Civil Guardthey took to the streets of Chiva to help while the worst cold weather of the century occurred. Without coverage or communications, they went around the town asking who needed help, and taking people from house to house. Amid all the tragedy there are also stories that ended happily.
Samuel returned home yesterday for the first time after a week of the floods and was moved when he passed through the door and remembered that horror. His house became a river, and now the ground floor is a gigantic gap that faces directly into the ravine. “When we arrived we had to break down the door and we found him on the second floor in a state of shock. We thought he was no longer alive, but when we started talking to him we saw that he was shaking his head, so we got him out as best we could,” Mújica recalls.
Lieutenant Lacalle with Teresa in the residence where she is staying with her caregiver Teresa. / Gonzalo Sánchez
A wild river at home
Fear had paralyzed him so much that he couldn’t move. I remember hearing below how the water burst the partitionsit was a rough river and it didn’t stop rising, I really thought I was going to stay there, he remembers.
“They opened the window with an ax to get in. I was awake almost all night, scared to death listening to the water pass by my house into the ravine. I had the door of my house blocked by 8 cars and they were able to arrive to save my life,” he recalls. . They took him out of the window in the middle of the night and without light.
Groping rescues
Pilar is with Teresa at the Chiva residence, enabled for the elderly who have lost their house to the flood while the city council finds an alternative. She was also saved by these agents, in a rescue completely in the dark and with the danger of an explosion.
She lives with her son on a farm where a gas leak was reported in the middle of the flood. The agents had to enter and evacuate the houses one by one. Most people were on upper floors and could get out on their own, Pilar did it on her own.
Houses destroyed by water in Chiva as it passes through the ravine. / Fernando Bustamante
Mújica, in fact, gives credit to an anonymous hero in the tragedy because There was no time for presentations. An employee of an electrical company who risked his life by taking his car and going to the place where the gas could be cut off throughout the town. “Without that boy I don’t know what would have happened, because the gas leak already reached the entire house,” Mújica recalls.
Start from scratch
Adrián is also alive thanks to these agents. Your house in The old town of Chiva simply does not exist. It is a pile of rubble that is piled up on the street, since the flood demolished it. “He explains that mentally he is still very shaken, but he continues to be grateful for the help of the Civil Guard to get out of his own house; “if not, he would be dead.”
Streets destroyed by the flood in Chiva. / Fernando Bustamante
“My street was a war zone. It has disappeared. I heard through the window how the water lifted even the cobblestones of the street and they hit the houses,” recalls Manuel, Pilar’s son. “The situation was terrifying, everyone in the dark and with a gas leak. If someone managed to light a candle, I don’t know how everything would have ended,” he laments.
At the El Torico bullfighting club they are busy preparing macaroni and chocolate with French toast for a snack. The residents of the town have gone out of their way and prepare food every day for those affected by the flood who have been left, suddenly, with nothing. “We see many people who are ashamed to come to ask for food even if they don’t have it, they are not used to it and they are embarrassed. We tell them that it’s okay to need help,” says one of the volunteers.
