Laura and Manu left the hotel after a night of silence and sleeplessness. “I don’t know where to go or what to do,” she repeated, visibly disconcerted. “We will have to make a list of priorities: charger, SIP, clothes,” he tried to point out. They were wearing what they were wearing and Manu acknowledged that at first they offered him clothes and he said no, but that he was already beginning to be aware of his new situation. His home, the first property they bought, is a skeleton: “It’s like a nightmare; I see the images and it doesn’t look like our house,” Laura indicated. Like them, there are nearly 450 affected people who hastily left their homes and barely retain 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 healthcare worker – he is now retired – helped him save his life when he began to detect that the smell of plastic and smoke entering the home was dangerous. In his escape, complicated by his sciatica, he still had time to ring an elderly neighbor’s doorbell, but no one answered on the other side of the door. José Luis needed oxygen and quickly warned that the Samu around the damaged building would be “insufficient.”
He admitted that the day after was being harder. She wondered what became of him and his wife. They have no close family and he barely receives 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 older people in the building and if it had been at night… It burned faster than a failure.”
And it was not worse, among other things due to the commendable work of Julián, the building’s janitor who, according to Manuel Fandos, another of the neighbors, managed to sound the alarm at many doors. Manuel was barely able to do it when he had to help an 80-year-old person out of the building down the stairs. Given the level of the tragedy, he admitted that the material issue was “the least important” and he breathed a sigh of relief at having been able to locate, during the early hours of the morning, four neighbors of whom he had no knowledge for many hours.
Some of those affected went to the Tabacalera municipal building where the Valencia City Council has installed a service point for those affected. Lisa, a Ukrainian woman, appeared there and describes the “horrible” situation that she had to live after arriving from that country at war a few months ago to “lose everything here”, all again, in the fire of the Campanar building. “They try to help us, but nothing is going to give me my dog ??back,” she 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 single words in Spanish, that they have lost everything except their passports because his wife who was with his son had time to get them.
Everyone moved between shock and dismay yesterday. The neighbors were, many of whom came yesterday, moved, to see with their own eyes what the building had become. The teachers at the neighborhood school were also immersed in stupefaction, they explained, for whom psychologists who could “help them sustain themselves” were “urgently” requested since five families from the center could be among the victims.
“Right now everything is anguish, we need help, each and every other. Those who entered are very shocked,” explain experienced firefighters who participated in the extinguishing tasks on Thursday. The authorities and neighbors were congratulated yesterday on the courage of the agents, who saw the cranes go up and down without rest, run and even jump from a burning balcony. Inside, everything was more difficult, their faces reflected it after leaving the stage.
Yesterday they supported each other, “because you have to let it go, talk about what’s happening to you,” they said. Faustino Yanguas, spokesperson for the SPPLB Firefighters Union, highlighted the work of the group: “In 20 minutes there were 100 firefighters in the parks ready to help, in addition to all those who had guard duty.” Even the new recruits showed up to help. Then the virulence of the fire, and the speed, surprised everyone. They did not expect such a catastrophe.
