Living Two Weeks Without Potable Water

Perhaps there can be no greater paradox: the enormous amount of water that flooded Valencia also took away the drinking water. Two weeks after the DANA, 7,000 people are still without water, according to updated data this Sunday by the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Although the municipalities of the zero zone are gradually restoring the service, difficulties persist. It is not uncommon for homes to have regained water just 24 hours after the cold drop, while their neighbors across the street did so a week later. Until the gradual trickle of taps that start working again has progressed, thousands of people have had to manage to survive without a (liquid) element that, they now recount, is not valued until it is missing.

Vicenta Serna and her sister-in-law Mari Carmen Zapata walk along Avinguda la Rambleta in Catarroja with a five-liter jug each. "Until yesterday (Sunday) we had neither water nor electricity," explains Vicenta. The Poyo ravine took everything in its path, including the motor that pumped water up to their home, which was destroyed. Since the Tuesday of the flood, they have been without running water and began to supply themselves by filling their containers at the potable water point with tanks installed by the local council.

"We have carried buckets, four or five a day," they recall. Meanwhile, the tap water started to flow, but it was murky. "We boiled it to be able to clean ourselves minimally in a basin, the body on one side and the head on the other, and even reused that water to flush the toilet later. We also used it to wash the dishes, but we still haven't been able to wash the clothes," Vicenta recounts. On Saturday, tap water began to flow, but "it still doesn't work well," Mari Carmen adds.

Across the street, Ana García and her daughter Lucía Martínez also carry bottles. "We have been a week without being able to shower and cleaning ourselves with baby wipes," Lucía recalls. Her mother and she have not drunk from the tap, and even so, they have suffered from gastroenteritis. "We have felt abandoned, unable to go to work, without public transport to go to the hospital. Help came very late," Ana laments.

Down the ravine, on Santa Cecilia Street in the Les Barraques neighborhood, possibly the most affected in Catarroja by the lack of water, normality seems like an unattainable dream to Ana Muñoz. This street accumulated a mountain of cars, was one of the last to see the machinery that removed them, and there are still destroyed furniture in the middle of the road. Her building and two adjacent ones are fed by wells that were covered by mud, and the motors broke due to the force of the flood. They were without running water for eight days.

"The neighbors tried, but we couldn't fix the well," Ana indicates. They had to boil the water, "but it was not drinkable and could not be used for drinking or cooking." "They told us we couldn't wash our faces either, but I did," says this resident of Catarroja. Thanks to the help of volunteers, they had bottled water, and now, a truck from the Logroño City Council's sewer service is trying to drain the mud. "It's a job that goes slowly because the mud has to be removed section by section. It was very difficult to clear the drains," says the worker Fernando García, who confesses he has never seen anything remotely like what he found in Valencia. He assures that in his work, one must have a lot of patience, but at least he has good news: "In two days, we will be able to have this street finished."