Crashing waves in a hilltop village, a night of terror from floods in Spain

CHIVA, Spain (AP) — Irene Cuevas will never forget the sound of the waves crashing below her apartment balcony.

If only there had been a flash of lightning in the darkness, allowing her to see a sound like a roaring sea.

“It was a constant fear because we had no light to see,” Cuevas told The Associated Press. “We could hear the roar of the waves, which was incredible. The street was completely flooded and we were hoping for lightning to at least see what situation we were in. There were waves and currents everywhere.

“We have that sound of the waves in our memory.”

devastating floods in eastern Spain This week, which has claimed more than 200 lives and destroyed countless homes and livelihoods, has also left a scar of terror on many survivors

Cuevas, a 48-year-old embryologist, is a resident of Chiva, a hill village about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the city of Valencia, whose southern outskirts have also been devastated floods on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In eight hours, Chiva received more rain than the city had received in the previous 20 months. Cuevas was at home and saw how the gorge dividing her village suddenly filled with gushing water.

A tsunami-like wave of water has claimed at least seven lives in Chiva, home to about 16,000 people, and the search continues for those missing either from destroyed houses or from the gorge.

“It was terrible because it started raining that night and the water started overflowing the gorge and started taking away cars and trees,” Cuevas said. “The underpasses of the bridges began to become clogged with debris, and water began to flow throughout the village.”

The gorge, called “Barranco de Chiva”, is usually dry, but several other drainage gorges flow into it and channel water to the vineyards below.

The violent storm caused a torrent of water that destroyed two of the four bridges crossing the gorge, leaving a third unsafe to cross. The walls of the gorge were corroded, the sidewalk and several houses collapsed, and holes appeared in others.

Cuevas, who moved to Chiva when she got married 18 years ago, lives one street away from the houses bordering the ravine. She and other people living in her apartment building helped several neighbors from the house in front of the house when they feared it would collapse. Neighbors said their house shook from the pressure of the water.

Cuevas and her neighbors helped tie up the street with ropes or cords so people on the other side could hold on as they made their way through the rushing water. They then walked up the stairs and about 20 people spent a sleepless night in her second-floor apartment and in the apartment above.

Amparo Cerda, Cuevas’ upstairs neighbor, said she was traumatized by memories of the fury of the waves and the sound of “doors exploding” when exposed to water.

Their building seemed to have turned into a ship, lost during a storm in the pitch darkness of the night.

“There were waves in the gorge, waves in the street below where the water was flowing in a different direction and flowing into the water coming from the gorge,” Cuevas said. “So, right here on this corner, right where the houses collapsed. , the two currents collided and produced terrifying waves.”

“When it got light, we saw the damage,” Cuevas said. “We saw all the missing houses and there was a feeling of powerlessness because we didn’t know where to start looking for people.”

Five days have passed since that terrible night, and in Chiva and other localities such as Paiporta, Barrio de la Torre and Massanassa, citizens and volunteers speak out to clear away the mountains of debris and thick brown layers of mud left behind by the water.

Five thousand more troops will arrive in the area this weekend to help the 2,500 soldiers already deployed. Thousands of police were also deployed.

But for now, the people themselves are still in the lead.

“Now we need to clean up and try to get back to normal because there’s more rain in the forecast for the weekend and that’s not going to help,” Cuevas said. “We are trying to get everything ready for when the rains return. Because they will.”