The ache of a household after the flood in Spain

Like each mum or dad in Valencia that day, Victor Matías had shortly modified his plans, fearing what may occur.

It was nonetheless pouring rain, however by now – early night – he had managed to depart work early, safely choose up his boys from daycare, and was about to organize their favourite dinner: croquetas.

The crispy fried mashed potato rolls, crammed with cheese and ham, can be a delight for Izan, 5, and Rubén, 3, as their mum Marta completed her evening shift on the grocery store on the town.

We have reconstructed the tragic chronology of what occurred subsequent.

Our picture emerges from the testimonies of neighbors and kin we spoke to, in addition to from what Victor himself was in a position to recall along with different first-hand testimonies supplied to the native media.

The damning story of the Matías household has attracted nice consideration in Spain. Many have been following updates on “Los niños desaparecidosas” – the lacking youngsters – as they’ve typically been described.

But this household’s ache is the ache of many individuals as it’s a nightmare replicated throughout the Valencia area, hit by flash floods almost two weeks in the past that killed no less than 219 folks.

More than 90 are nonetheless lacking.

When we arrived on the household house a number of days after the flood, it was languishing in a sea of ​​destruction.

That startling statistic — a 12 months’s price of rain was dumped on components of Valencia in a matter of hours — turned simple to consider whenever you took all of it in.

Huge metallic containers – free of their tractor-trailers – lay at unfathomable angles amid a jumble of automobiles, crumpled furnishings and treacherous mud.

One of the few issues nonetheless intact was the door to what had been the boys’ bed room; the person vivid white letters that spell out their names stand out in a sea of ​​brown.

Finding their method into this mess was Jonathan Perez, their neighbor, who started to relive the terrifying sequence of occasions. “It was insanity,” he stated. “I’ve by no means seen such power.”

Jonathan defined to us how the swollen torrent had dragged with it the vans parked subsequent to the Matías household’s home and one in all them broke by an exterior wall.

He stated Victor had defined to him how he had taken his youngsters into his arms because the water carried all of them out.

Then, regardless of his determined efforts to carry them, they disappeared.

Victor was discovered about 4 hours later, greater than 200 meters away.

He was clinging to a tree.

His mom, the boys’ grandmother, revealed that Victor had been able to throw himself into the stream and give up to his destiny, however then stopped.

He instructed himself he could not go away his spouse alone.

For Izan, 5, and Rubén, 3, few locations appeared safer than the playground that was their house and yard.

Their aunt, Barbara Sastre, instructed us that they had been like little bugs – “bichetes” – a pleasant description to point out how they buzzed round, that’s, after they weren’t absorbed of their cartoons.

“They had been such blissful youngsters,” she instructed us.

Izan and Rubén’s mother and father had bought the property from a person referred to as Francisco Javier Arona.

Javi, as he’s recognized, instructed Spanish information company EFE that the home had grow to be “a paradise” for the Matías household.

He stated that he himself lovingly constructed the home in La Curra, a neighborhood of Mas del Jutge, in colonial type in three years.

Javi stated he affixed decorative amphorae and delicate clay stars beneath a sweeping arch.

There was little visitors within the cul-de-sac exterior, which meant the children may run round carefree with little perceptible hazard.

The impending storm felt on October twenty ninth was a really large hazard, so Victor closed his enterprise early and went to select up his boys from daycare so he may preserve them secure and dry at house because the rain at all times fell. stronger.

The power of the downpour turned unimaginable and shortly the facility was reduce off.

The brothers’ grandmother, Antonia María Matías, a 72-year-old most cancers affected person, instructed ABC Sevilla that she referred to as her son Victor round 6pm and heard the brothers crying.

The water round them frequently rose. But nonetheless, they had been secure for now.

It might have been their refuge, however the household house was additionally close to a truck cease.

Jonathan Perez, their neighbor, defined to us how this performed a lethal position.

He stated: “The father instructed us there was a truck that hit the again of the home and the power of the water took the whole lot away.”

“Victor regained his steadiness and carried the boys in his arms. But then he realized he not had them. The water took the whole lot in its path,” he defined.

Barbara Sastre, the boy’s aunt, additionally instructed us that no less than one truck had ripped by the home in a blow that despatched the boys and their father tumbling into a close-by ravine.

The nameless proprietor of the car parking zone the place the vans got here from instructed a newspaper that they’d not hit the household’s house. He insisted that it was the power of the water that brought on the deadly injury.

Jonathan, the neighbor, summed up the simmering anger that hundreds of thousands of Spaniards really feel. Notably, the official pink alert despatched to cellphones got here at 8pm, far too late.

“They beloved life and hadn’t even begun to be folks, they had been three and 5,” she stated.

“With higher coordination, higher administration and early warning – even half an hour earlier – these youngsters may have been saved and people mother and father wouldn’t have gone by hell.”

The whole neighborhood of La Curra, surprised and shocked by the violence of the flood, instantly began in search of the lacking Izan and Rubén.

At least they did as soon as the water receded sufficient for them to climb down from the timber, get out of their automobiles and attempt to reorient themselves.

They had been helped by cops from close by Alicante, together with a pal of Victor’s, who arrived shortly and started a determined search.

But the place to begin?

Cars, bricks, mattress frames had been transported tons of of meters from the place they as soon as stood.

A crew of firefighters from Mallorca after which volunteers from the Civil Protection of the island of Ibiza additionally intervened and searched essentially the most tough to succeed in areas.

Despite almost two weeks of intense day by day searches, the brothers haven’t been discovered.

In the hours at first modified, Marta, the boys’ mom, had began her evening shift within the store, with the understanding that their father would come to select them up from college and take them house.

In the early hours of the following morning, she was instructed her boys had been gone.

Relatives say they can not describe what Marta is experiencing.

The boy’s grandmother, Antonia María, stated her son Victor’s life had been destroyed – in her personal phrases “turned to mud”.

While recovering in hospital, Victor started sleeping together with his youngsters’s blankets – salvaged from the ruins of their household house – positioned over his face.

It’s the closest I might be to them now.