Storm on the Ebro: "If they don't get the top floor, we won't count it."

Godall (Montsià)"We haven't had any sickness, we've been incredibly lucky," explains Mari Pau, the pharmacist from Godall (Montsià), to her neighbors. But she's not smiling either. The town's misfortune doesn't allow it. This Monday morning, when the sun rose, everyone went out to check on the damage caused by the storm. The best news is that there are no deaths, but considering the state of the town, it seems impossible. Godall is the place that has been most affected by the storm. Alice, And despite the determination of her neighbors, who today were constantly cleaning the town with shovels, brooms, and tractors, it will take a long time to recover.

Simona's face still contorts when she remembers Sunday afternoon. The couple, over 90 years old, she cares for were alone at home, and when she saw the amount of water falling, she remembered with terror that they live on the ground floor. "I ran out of the house, but I couldn't reach it. I saw how the water was coming in through the window of their house, but I couldn't reach it. There was a lot of water," she recalls. She doesn't want to even say the word, but it's clear she imagined the worst scenario.

When the water level dropped, she decided to cross the street and opened the door of the house. Inside were the two elderly people sitting in chairs with their legs up. "The power had gone out and they were scared, they didn't understand what was happening," she says. Another neighbor also thought of the elderly and climbed through a window in the adjacent warehouse, which was completely flooded, and entered the dining room almost at the same time as Simona. "Between the two of them, they got them upstairs," she says. The couple's son, who lives in Amposta, also went up to rescue his parents, but the water blocked him at a roundabout. He knew it was supposed to rain, but he didn't imagine it would rain so much.

Unable to react

Despite the warnings, the storm took the town by surprise because the water didn't give it time to react. On Sunday, starting at five in the afternoon, it began to rain heavily. The neighbors who were playing guiñote at the town bar even joked. "We'll still have to run," they said. Suddenly, everyone understood that this was dangerous. "At first, there were three inches of water running down the road, and in less than half an hour, it was a river," explains Desiree Simón, a still-shocked neighbor. A curtain of hellish water fell, shattering the lights, and fear and anguish gripped the town.

Just a year ago, the ferocious floodwaters struck the Valencian Community. Perhaps the memory of that tragedy helped the residents of Godall maintain a certain degree of caution. And with it, life. "I went out onto the balcony and saw how the water was about to sweep my car away. I even recorded it," explains Joan Zaragoza, a resident of La Sénia who is celebrating with a girl from Godall. "At first, I thought maybe I could move the car, but I soon realized I couldn't," he recalls with relief.

The Troncho family also made the right decision. At the time of the downpour, the father, Ángel, his son Kevin, and his partner, Clara Lletí, were in the house. Water began to enter through the window and was already pouring in through the door. They unmade all the beds to use the sheets to apply more pressure, but the water was much stronger than they could. "I saw that I couldn't save anything and thought of my son and daughter-in-law," Ángel recalls. They gave up. They went upstairs and a few seconds later they heard the door click. Water filled up to two meters of the ground floor. "If they don't get to the top floor, we won't count it," Clara says.

After confirming there was no personal injury, the townspeople, with the help of firefighters and emergency crews, got to work. While some residents removed debris from a flooded warehouse, others loaded it onto a tractor trailer. Brooms, baskets, shovels. Meanwhile, on the next street, two men on a car lifted a power line so another tractor could tow a vehicle underneath. Everyone knew what to do. "We're hardworking people," said one resident, amidst the astonishment at the organizational skills of the person writing these lines.

The town of Godall is built on a channeled ravine that couldn't handle all the water that fell on Sunday. Nothing like this had ever happened before. "As it's a very steep town, we thought this couldn't happen to us," admits Carme, a resident.