Those who did not live to hear the warning of the dana: from the businessman clinging to a lamppost to the veterinarian trapped in a garage

Dozens of victims of the largest natural disaster to hit the Valencian Community, with 227 dead, lost their lives, disappeared or were trapped in a hellish death trap before the mass message that the Generalitat sent directly to the population's mobile phones on October 29, according to the case summary to which EL PAÍS has had access.

The alert was sent to the telephones on the day of the tragedy at 20.11 hours, when the Poyo ravine in Valencia had already overflowed, dozens of municipalities were flooded, and the 112 number was overwhelmed. More than 60 testimonies from relatives of victims have been presented before the magistrate who has been criminally investigating the flood since October. The head of the Court of Instruction Number Three of Catarroja (Valencia), Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, has focused on finding out what was the reason for the delay in the message sent by the Generalitat through ES-Alert, a system that the former Minister of the Interior and Justice Salomé Pradas admitted she did not even know existed - despite the fact that the Consell itself admitted in its documents that it was already active and, in fact, had proven it - before being dismissed by the president, Carlos Mazón.

The investigator's thesis is that many deaths could have been avoided. These are some of the human stories left behind by the tragedy, as reported in the summary:

The businessman clinging to a lamppost

HH, an Asian businessman with two children, saw a huge wave engulf his bazaar in Massanassa (Valencia, 9,584 inhabitants). The water began to penetrate the premises at 6:30 p.m. And, half an hour later, in a desperate manoeuvre, he decided to raise the shutters. His shop has become a rat trap. It is impossible to get out through its two doors. “My father wanted to leave my mother alone,” says his daughter, who specifies that the last time she spoke to her father was at “8:00 a.m.” The businessman tries to climb to the top of the shelves, but the structure does not hold. He also tries to reach the first floor of the building, but his neighbour, an elderly woman, is not there and cannot open the door for him. Finally, he breaks the glass of one of the doors of the bazaar, goes out into the street and remains clinging to a lamppost. The water reaches two and a half metres high. The flooding moved a parked truck, which hit the pole and caused a fatal fall. The shopkeeper's body was found two weeks later.

A lethal walk

On the day of the tragedy, A. Martín went for a walk at 6.45pm in Alfafar (22,131 inhabitants). As it wasn't raining, he went about his daily routine. He didn't have his mobile phone and he didn't have his ID with him either. His wife went out to the street to throw away plastic at a recycling point and, when she went up to the house, she turned on the television. The news showed the collapse of a bridge in Paiporta (27,184 inhabitants). Half an hour later, the power went out. The woman never saw her husband again. The next day, she unsuccessfully toured this town where the flood left 15 dead. "A pharmacist told me that there were four people up on the lamppost. My husband couldn't have been one of them because of his leg," said the woman regarding a physical impediment of the missing man.

The garage turned into a mousetrap

The veterinarian from Benetússer (15,879 inhabitants) RE left her clinic on the day of the catastrophe at 7.30 pm. Her boyfriend, who had arranged to pick her up by car, was unable to enter this town where the flood left 10 dead. He parked the vehicle in the neighbouring Alfafar and went around looking for his partner. He did not reach his destination. The girl took shelter in a street near the establishment where she worked. “The cars formed a kind of dam and the water started to come in very strongly. My daughter, along with a man, grabbed onto a metal post in an open garage,” her father told the magistrate. The two victims fell down the ramp. Her father claims that his relative hit her head and was knocked unconscious. She was found 300 metres from the car park, which had turned into a mousetrap.

The parking trap

The Catarroja LR resident went down to the garage of his house at six in the afternoon on the day of the flood and was never heard from again. An hour later, his wife desperately sent a video to her son in which cars appeared floating in the waters that devastated this Valencian town, where the flood caused 25 deaths. “At first, we thought he had been able to get the car out of the garage, but he couldn't get out and the torrent caught him on top of him,” said his son. The relative believes that his father tried to leave the garage by the ramp, when a torrent of water entered the building.

Incommunicado and locked up

When I.'s son tried to speak to his mother, a resident of Alfafar, the phone was busy. It was 6:45 p.m. on the day of the tragedy. And the water was silently beginning to flood the streets of this town. At 7:30 a.m. the following day, the relative managed to gain access to the house, which was destroyed and with the sofa embedded in the window. A pair of Civil Guard officers opened the only room in the building that was closed. The elderly woman was not there. “The water reached two metres and we couldn't walk. It was before the alert,” her son told the magistrate. The body ended up appearing under a car.