MADRID.-EFE Hundreds of Latin Americans are trying to recover from the worst storm of this century in Spain, which has especially punished Valencia (east) and has caused at least 155 deaths and multimillion-dollar damage, while the police and relief teams make their way through the mud to deliver basic supplies to those affected. They recognize that they are marginalized from receiving aid and food.
The storm has especially hit municipalities in the metropolitan area of the city of Valencia, such as Paiporta, where several hundred Colombians were still trapped on October 31, 2024, as well as in other nearby towns. According to the delegate in Valencia of the Sociocultural and Development Cooperation Association for Colombia and Ibero-America (Aculco), Luz Marina Rendón, her own daughter, is among the more than one hundred Colombians isolated in the town of Sedaví.
Drinking water and food, priority objective
In these circumstances, getting food and drinking water has become a vital challenge, recognizes Honduran Yesenia Zelaya. “People go crazy in the streets, desperate, looking for everything,” but in the supermarkets there is “nothing left.” nothing,” he said in a telephone conversation from his home, on the fourth floor of a five-story building in Paiporta, considered ground zero for the floods. In this municipality, with dozens of fatalities, in the last few hours the electricity returned and Mobile communications are recovering little by little.
“Here we are, trying to see what we can get for food and to survive” because the stores are “totally out of stock,” Yesenia described, while some establishments are looted.
Colombian and Honduran located
Meanwhile, a large deployment of personnel with vehicles and helicopters, including the Military Emergency Unit, continues to search for dozens of missing people among tons of mud and debris. The Colombian ambassador in Madrid, Eduardo Ávila Navarrete, explained that, for the moment , there are no Colombians among the identified deceased and celebrated that, as the rescue tasks progress and communications are reestablished, numerous compatriots who were untraceable are appearing.
The diplomat asked the affected Colombians to calm down and recalled that their families can contact the authorities through the emergency channels enabled to help locate the victims. Also the Honduran ambassador in Madrid, Marlon Brevé Reyes, confirmed the appearance of six of the nine Hondurans who had been reported missing. More than 34,000 Colombians and nearly 12,000 Hondurans reside in the area affected by the storm, according to the latest official data, among many other Latin Americans.
With the power outages and communications down, the search tasks are complicated and friends and relatives of those affected have turned to social networks to search for them. This was the case of the Colombian Jhon Anderson Jaramillo Trejos, about whom they sought information through a group of Facebook of Colombians in Valencia and that appeared on Thursday morning, as confirmed by the family to EFE.
Citizen solidarity against tragedy but Latinos marginalized
The catastrophe has activated citizen networks of solidarity and information. The president of the Intercultural Platform of Spain, Eduardo Béjar, told EFE that they are working to gather food and cleaning products and deliver them to the affected areas.
The Aculco association has mobilized to supply food and drinking water in collaboration with the Food Bank, but there are many difficulties in accessing the affected areas, acknowledged the delegate in Valencia, Luz Marina Rendón. And among so much catastrophe, the stories of personal improvement multiply, like that of the Colombian Jean Paul Molina, who negotiated mud, mud, currents and stranded vehicles in the early morning to get home on foot, after walking 16 kilometers in water above his waist, after being trapped for hours at work due to the storm.
And José Luis, a Venezuelan volunteer firefighter residing in a town near Valencia, who asked for help and volunteers to reach Paiporta. “There is no more terror than this,” he summarized. EFE
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