“Everything in ruins”: the ruined lives of Paiporta at the epicenter of the floods in Spain

PAIPORTA, Spain. Images of smiling babies on the wall somehow survived.

Almost everything else in the kindergarten — bassinets, high chairs, toys — was destroyed when a devastating wall of water swept through Paiporta, turning the Valencia municipality of 30,000 into the likely epicenter of Spain’s worst natural disaster in history.

“We lost everything,” Javi Pons told The Associated Press. He said the water level was above his head at the daycare, which his wife’s family has run for half a century, and pointed to a knee-high mark where the mud reached.

“I have lived here all my life. This has never happened, and no one could have imagined that this would happen,” Pons said. “The whole of Paiporta is like this, it is all in ruins.”

Authorities say at least 62 people have died in Payport, out of 213 confirmed deaths from flash floods in Spain on Tuesday and Wednesday. Most of these deaths occurred in the eastern region of Valencia, with local media calling Payport “ground zero” for the floods.

Four days have passed since a tsunami-like flood swept through the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia, covering many populated areas with sticky, thick mud. The cleanup task ahead remains gigantic, and the hunt for bodies continues.

Many of the streets in Payport remain impassable to all traffic except bulldozers, piled high with piles of sodden furniture and household items, and countless wrecked cars.

Every foot is plastered with mud. Some people carry walking sticks to balance their steps, as if walking these streets is a hike through a swamp.

A washing machine lies on its side among household rubbish in the church square. A huge tree trunk lies inside the store without a wall. Antique chests of drawers, paintings and a teddy bear can still be identified among the unrecognizable debris that has fallen into the all-consuming swamp.

Lydia Gimenez, a school teacher, watched from her second-floor apartment as the normally dry canal that divides the city — the Barranco del Poyo — went from completely empty to overflowing within 15 minutes. She called the aftermath of the flood a “battlefield without bombs.”

And this happened without a single drop of rain falling on Payport.

The storm caused a downpour upstream. This deluge then rushed to Paiporta and other areas closer to the Mediterranean coast, which were devastated by flash floods.

Residents of Paiport did not receive flood warnings from the regional government on their mobile phones until two hours after the dangerous water passed through them.

The onslaught of water widened the riverbank, washed away houses and a pedestrian bridge, removed metal railings from another bridge and dragged vehicles into the canal. Eight wheels are the only parts that remain visible from the overturned truck that sank in the muddy bottom of the Poyot.

It may take weeks to clean up the damage.

Thousands of volunteers walked for more than an hour from the city of Valencia to help the residents of Paiporta, carrying buckets, brooms and shovels as they waded through the mud.

Homeowner Rafa Rosellon was waiting for heavy equipment to arrive to remove two cars — one lying on top of the other — that had been washed away by the flood and landed outside his home, blocking the front door. He had to unscrew a metal grill and slip through a window to get inside and see the mess.

“There’s nothing I can do until these cars get over,” Rosellon said. “Government forces that could have done something, either from the regional government or from the national government, did nothing to help us. All the work is done by us, citizens and volunteers.”

About 2,000 soldiers are taking part in emergency efforts after the floods – searching for survivors, helping with clean-up and distribution of essential goods, as well as 1,800 national police officers and almost 2,500 Civil Guard gendarmes. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday that they had rescued about 4,800 people and “helped more than 30,000 people in their homes, on roads and in flooded industrial areas”.

Only a small contingent of soldiers was shoveling dirt in Paiport on Saturday as Sanchez promised that 5,000 more soldiers and 5,000 policemen were on their way to eastern Spain.

Just a few doors down from where Rosellon lived, a woman sweeping muddy water from her door broke down in tears when asked what she had lost.

“I can’t find my husband, so none of this matters,” she said.

Another turn opened a horrible scene; a street filled with half a dozen cars and crossed by countless reeds that had grown nearby before the flood. A man shouts from the house: “I can’t do anything else! There is nothing else I can do!”

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Associated Press writer Teresa Medrano contributed from Madrid.