Mud-caked volunteers clean flood debris in a Spanish town as authorities struggle to respond
Mud cakes her boots, splatters her leggings and the gloves holding her broom.Brown specks freckle her cheeks.The mire covering Alicia Montero is the signature uniform of the impromptu army of volunteers who for a third day Friday shoveled and swept out the muck and debris that filled the small town of Chiva in Valencia after flash floods swept through the region. Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory has left at least 205 people dead with untold numbers still missing, and countless lives in tatters.As police and emergency workers continue the grim search for bodies, authorities appear overwhelmed by the enormity of the disaster, and survivors are relying on the esprit de corps of volunteers who have rushed in to fill the void.While hundreds of people in cars and on foot have been streaming in from Valencia city to the suburbs to help, Montero and her friends are locals of Chiva, where at least seven people died when Tuesday’s storm unleashed its fury.“I never thought this could happen.
It moves me to see my town in this shape,” Montero tells The Associated Press.“We have always had autumn storms, but nothing like this.”She says she barely avoided the floods when she was driving home Tuesday, and that if she had got on the road five minutes later she believes she would have been swept away like dozens of cars still stranded on the highway that crosses a flood plain between her town and the city of Valencia, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) to the east.Tractors roar through Chiva’s narrow streets, only briefly stopping or slowing to allow people to toss broken doors, shattered furniture and other debris into the beds before churning their way up, away from the epicenter of the destruction.Residents and volunteers meanwhile shovel and sweep out the layers of mud that coat the floors of the ruined shops and homes, the air abuzz with frenetic energy.
People carry buckets of water from a large ornamental pool in a town square to wash a...