Neighbours in Valencia: from mud to collapse
(Image Credit: Crónica Balear)
The natural phenomenon that affected the east and south of the Iberian Peninsula during the 29th of October was catalogued as the most extreme of the last century. The natural disaster affected 78 towns and cities. It caused 220 mortal victims and more than thirty-six thousand rescued people from under the debris caused by the floodings and from blocked parking’s and houses. Most of the mortal victims have not been identified yet. There are still more than 50 disappeared individuals that the rescue services are looking for. This event is common in Spain every year, but the intensity and consequences of this one have been extreme. The damages that the neighbors of many towns of Valencia have not gone back to their previous normality. Their houses are still full of mud and are no longer habitable.
Towns in Valencia like Chiva and Catarroja , that were the most affected, received help from volunteers coming from all around Spain. They offered their free help out the spirit of collaboration and with the sole purpose of trying to give return the affected towns to the activities that were taking place before the disaster happened.
Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.#DANA #Valencia pic.twitter.com/jDe08oCank
— Fran🦇 (@FranVCF_) November 1, 2024
Damage caused by the floodings
“Don't go too close there, that wall might give way. And that crack looks bad too.” One of the volunteers who cleaned Angélica's rented house in Chiva, next to the ravine, on Friday could already sense the structural damage caused by the force of the DANA. Three days later, that wall gave way. “The owners have told us that it is at risk of falling down. The house we are cleaning now is going to have to be pulled down, like many others”, confirmed his daughter-in-law. It is one of more than a hundred houses that are at risk of becoming rubble in the coming weeks.
To walk along the edge of the street is to see walls torn off completely as if they were made of paper. Those who have emptied them of mud now find that they could have fallen on top of them. Up to 130 families have been evicted from their homes in three streets in the historic centre of Chiva. The municipal town planning services advised this, as the mayoress, Amparo Fort, explained. “They are checked daily to verify the state of the houses. At the moment there has been one controlled collapse, and another is planned, but it doesn't mean that all of them will be”, she recalled. The council appealed for expert architects to come and help them to assess whether the structure is affected, if it is recoverable or if it is in ruins.
The warning was given on Saturday by a recreational but emblematic building in the town. In the middle of the night, the back of the building overlooking the ravine collapsed. With it another three of the facades of the nearby houses facing the ravine. Since then, the vigilance of the neighbours and the town council has been constant. Vicenta, who lives in a new building next to the ravine, breathes a sigh of relief. ‘The architect has come and told us that, although the garage was flooded, there is no damage,’ she says.
(Image Credit: La Vanguardia)
Of the 130 families evicted from their homes, 50 have been relocated to hotels and 10 to the shelter set up by the Red Cross at the Marjana Institute, which has 50 more places available. The rest are staying with relatives or friends.
Damage analysis
It is not only Chiva that has buildings under review. In Catarroja and L'Alcúdia there are also evacuees. And the fact is that “water does more damage than it seems”, warns Salvador Lara, dean of the College of Architects of the Valencian Community. ‘It does it in two ways: in the part of Utiel and Requena, the water has pushed them in such a way that it has broken them, and in the flat areas, it grows and drowns everything. Both things have happened now in the Valencian Community,’ he describes.
Can waterlogged basements create a structural problem? “It can. If they are there for a long time because of corrosion or because the building, being full of water, weighs more and sinks into the ground. This is true of modern buildings, which have basements,” he says. “In the old ones, the walls absorb water and, although for the moment it is not noticeable, in addition to the salts and limes that can come out and make it difficult to live in, when they start to dry out, what happens is that the walls can break due to drying out”, he adds before pointing out that it is “deferred damage”, while the other, “the flood of water”, is instantaneous.
Lara warns that “as people get sick in different ways, buildings suffer in different ways”, but the houses in these localities should be checked if cracks appear “because they have been subjected to a stress that, although it has not fallen, has given way a little and is threatening.” The same thing that the dean says about residential buildings is happening with infrastructures such as bridges, which are being checked by specialists from the Valencian Building Institute. The College has received many requests. “We have to take a good look and there is a lot to look at,”he warns.
“Now we have to visit these towns and make a good check of everything”
“Until now, we couldn't go into the villages; the fire brigade, which has its own specialists, and the army were doing the work. But now we have to visit these towns and make a good check of everything,” he says. There is already a list of dozens of volunteers willing to collaborate in this task with the town planning services of the town councils.
The expert’s advice to citizens is very clear: “You have to look at every crack that appears in pillars, walls or floors, which are also very important, and notify a technician”. Insurance company experts, who are already providing assistance, will also be involved in this work.
