"The water was up to his neck when they sent the alert": the story of the relatives of those killed by the DANA
The case summary reveals that the warning was given late and poorly, and that many elderly people were trapped on the ground floors.
BarcelonaLate and bad. The DANA judge considers that the massive alert to mobile phones sent by the Generalitat Valenciana was "late" and with an "erroneous" message, because it did not ask the neighbors to take refuge in the upper areas of the buildings. The magistrate supports this with the statements she has taken from dozens of relatives of the victims of the ravine in recent weeks and which she has included in the summary, which has advanced Eldiario.es and The Country. And many of the elderly victims died in houses on the ground floor.
Some of the witnesses corroborate this. A man of Chinese nationality and resident in Benetússer told the judge about the death of his daughter, who was in the bar they ran: "At 8:00 p.m. the water was already up to her hips, and half an hour later up to her neck," he explained, coinciding with the time that the Generalitat Valenciana sent the alert. When his daughter tried to save herself with a ladder and with the help of neighbours, she fell into the water and died.
"Everything happened before the alarm went off, nobody knew anything," explains another woman from Sedaví who lost her sister. She regrets that people were not warned that they had to go up to the upper floors. This is not an isolated case. The vast majority of the dozens of relatives of victims of the storm have explained to the judge in charge of the investigation that the warnings arrived late and without clear instructions, which would have reduced the 224 deaths and three missing people that occurred on the fateful afternoon of October 29 in the Valencian Community.
The wife of another deceased from Benetússer, a father of two children who went down to get the vehicle out of the garage, also declared: "When the warning alarm came on the mobile phone, her husband was no longer there," says the report. The man managed to get the vehicle out of the garage, but the force of the water dragged him and took him to another parking lot, from where the neighbors heard him "call for help for 40 minutes." The proceedings reveal that houses and garages became the main traps for the victims. The data speak for themselves: 103 lifeless bodies were found on ground floors, and 35 in parking lots and basements, according to the count by the Data Integration Center (CID). Almost half of the victims were over 70 years old.
A resident of Catarroja told the judge that her mother, who lived on a ground floor in the town, had already told her before the alert arrived on her cell phones that water was starting to enter her house. The witness explained that when she tried to get there it was already impossible to get in, despite having tried several times without success: "The cars acted as a barrier and she couldn't get through." Some shocking witnesses that do nothing but put the government of Carlos Mazón on the ropes.
