Laura and Manu left the hotel after a night of silence and no sleep. “I don’t know where to go or what to do”, she repeated, visibly bewildered. “It will be necessary to make a list of priorities: charger, SIP, clothes…”, he tried to point out. They walked with one hand in front and the other behind and Manu acknowledged that at first they offered him clothes and said no, but that he was beginning to be aware of his new situation. Their home, the first property they bought, is a skeleton: “It’s like a nightmare; I see the pictures and it doesn’t look like our house”, said Laura. Like them, there are nearly 450 affected people who were rushed from their homes and barely keep any of their memories, belongings or documentation.
José Luis and his wife, Ángela, were also in the hotel where they spent the night. His experience as a health worker – he is now retired – helped him save his life when he began to detect that the smell of plastic and the smoke entering the house were dangerous. During the trip, complicated by sciatica, she still had time to ring the doorbell of an elderly neighbor, but no one answered on the other side of the door. José Luis needed oxygen and quickly warned that the SAMU that were around the damaged building would be “insufficient”.
He admitted that the next day was harder. He wondered what would happen to him and his wife. They have no family nearby and he barely gets a pension. “What do I do, buy a Quechua tent and live under a bridge?”. However, he admitted that it could have been worse: “There are many elderly people in the building and if it had been at night… It burned faster than a fault”.
And it was not worse, among other things, because of the commendable work of Julián, the caretaker of the building, who, according to Manuel Fandos, another neighbor, managed to sound the alarm on many doors. Manuel was barely able to warn because he had to help an 80-year-old person out of the building by the stairs. Given the level of the tragedy, he admitted that the material issue was “the least important” and breathed a sigh of relief for having been able to locate, during the morning, four neighbors from whom he had not heard from for many hours.
Some of those affected approached the Tabaquera municipal building, where Valencia City Council has set up a point of care for those affected. There, Lisa personified herself, a Ukrainian woman who describes the “horrible” situation she had to live with after arriving from that war-torn country a few months ago to “lose everything here”, all over again, in the fire in the Campanar building. “They are trying to help us, but nothing will give me back my dog”, he lamented.
On the other side of the border is Yuri, a citizen of Russian origin who has been working in Spain for five years, where his father settled. He explains, in English and with loose words in Spanish, that they have lost everything, except for their passports, since his wife, who was with her son, had time to take them.
Between shock and consternation they were all moving yesterday. The neighbors were, many of whom approached yesterday, moved, to see with their own eyes what the building had become. The neighborhood school teachers were also stunned, they explained, for whom psychologists were “urgently” requested who could “help them support themselves, since five families in the center could be among the victims”.
“At the moment everything is distressing, we need help, one and the other. Those who entered are very shocked”, explain the experienced firefighters who participated in the extinguishing tasks on Thursday. Authorities and neighbors congratulated the officers’ courage yesterday, who saw the cranes go up and down without stopping, run and even jump from a burning balcony. Inside, everything was more difficult, the faces collected it after leaving the stage. Yesterday they supported each other, “because you need to let it go, talk about what’s happening to you”, they assured. Faustino Yanguas, spokesman for the SPPLB Firemen’s union, highlighted the collective’s work: “In 20 minutes there were 100 firefighters in the parks ready to help, in addition to all those on duty.” Even the newly incorporated people were there to help. Then the fire’s virulence and speed surprised them all. They did not expect such a catastrophe.
