Mud-covered volunteers clear debris after flooding in a Spanish city until authorities are unable to respond

CHIVA, Spain. — Mud caked her boots, spattered her gaiters, and her gloves held her broom. Brown spots litter her cheeks.

The mud covering Alicia Montero is the signature uniform of the makeshift army of volunteers who raked and swept away the trash and debris that filled the small town of Chiva in Valencia for a third day on Friday after flash floods swept through the region. Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in history has left at least 205 people dead, countless more missing, and countless more missing.

As police and emergency workers continue the gruesome search for bodies, authorities appear overwhelmed by the enormity of the disaster, and survivors rely on the responsiveness of volunteers who have rushed in to fill the void.

While hundreds of people in cars and on foot headed from the city of Valencia to the suburbs to help, Montero and her friends are local to Chiva, where at least seven people died in Tuesday’s storm.

“I never thought that this could happen. It touches me that I see my city in this way,” Montero told the Associated Press. “We’ve always had fall storms, but nothing like this.”

She says she narrowly escaped flooding as she drove home on Tuesday, and that if she had gotten on the road five minutes later, she believes she would have been swept away, like the dozens of cars still parked on the highway it crosses floodplain between it. town and city of Valencia, about 18 miles to the east.

Tractors rumble through Chiva’s narrow streets, stopping only briefly or slowing down to give people a chance to throw broken doors, smashed furniture and other debris onto beds before moving uphill, away from the epicenter of the destruction.

Residents and volunteers, meanwhile, are raking and sweeping away the layers of dirt covering the floors of destroyed shops and houses, the air buzzing with frenzied energy. People carry buckets of water from a large decorative pool in the town square to wash away the mud. Three young boys take a break to kick a soccer ball on a slippery street.

Newbies are easy to spot because they are clean, but a few steps down the slippery cobblestone Chivas are quickly spotted with dirt.

“How many hours did we do this? Who knows?” – says Montero, taking a break from cleaning near the gorge, which was filled with a devastating wall of water just a few days ago.

“We work, stop to eat the sandwich they give us, and keep working.”

DEATH IN TRUCK

“So much dirt in the streets, as if the waters had left the face of the earth,” is how Charles Dickens described London in the 19th century in his novel “The Cold House.”

In Chiva and other parts of Valencia – Payporta, Masanas, Barrio de la Torre, Alfafar – dirt has become synonymous with death and destruction. The swamp flowed into houses and crawled into cars, smashing some cars, easily lifting and moving others.

This week’s storm brought more rain to Chiva in eight hours than the city had in the previous 20 months. The deluge caused flooding that swept away two of the city’s four bridges and made the third one unsafe to cross. The water has now receded and the Civil Guard divers have disappeared, but police continue to search the gorge, broken homes and underground garages, worried that the mud may be hiding more bodies.

“Whole houses have disappeared. We don’t know if there were people inside or not,” Mayor Amparo Fort told RNE radio.

CITIZENS FILLING THE GAP LEFT BY THE AUTHORITY

There are so many people coming to help the worst-hit areas that authorities have asked them not to drive or walk there because they are blocking roads needed by emergency services.

“It is very important that you come home,” said regional president Carlos Mason, who thanked the volunteers for their good will. The regional authorities asked volunteers to gather on Saturday morning in the city’s large cultural center to organize work crews and transport.

Power was finally restored to Chiva’s 20,000 residents Thursday evening, but there is still no water. The local authorities are distributing water, food and essential goods in the cities of Valencia affected by the flash floods, and the Red Cross is using its large aid network to help those affected.

In Chiva, Civil Guard police officers are searching the destroyed houses and the ravine for bodies, and are also controlling traffic. Firefighters help ensure the safety of buildings. About 500 soldiers have been deployed in the Valencia region to deliver water and essential supplies to those in need, and more are being prepared.

But so far there is no military unit in Chiva, where a wave of solidarity among ordinary citizens underscores the shortage of official aid. The atmosphere is just such that the townspeople are just getting used to it.

A man cries in the Astoria movie theater, which has been converted into a warehouse. The theater is filled with piles of water bottles and fruit. People make sandwiches. One group of young men arrive and leave bottled water before picking up shovels and brooms and joining the fray.

Across from the square near the town hall is a sign saying that everyone is allowed to drink two bottles of water a day. Volunteers hand out baguette sandwiches.

Cleaning up a bakery that has been in her family for five generations, María Teresa Sánchez hopes that will continue, but she’s not sure if her 100-year-old oven can be saved.

“It’s going to take a long time for Chevy to recover from this,” she said. “But it’s true that we didn’t feel alone. We help each other. And at the end of the day, that’s what we really embrace, this spirit of an isolated town where nobody’s come to help, but see how we’re all out there? This is the bright light of this story.”

Medrano reported from Madrid. Associated Press writers Colin Berry in Milan and Jamie Kiten in Geneva contributed to this report.

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