ValenciaEvery fatality that the emergency services locate in the municipalities hit by the storm must cross the Túria. On the other side of the river, the work of the forensics is unceasing: they have to identify them in order to be able to give an answer to the dozens of relatives who have been waiting for news for almost three days. Many of them are still unknown. Others do, like the six elderly people who died in the Paiporta residence where they lived. The testimony of his torment was recorded on videos. For almost 45 minutes of anguish, footage shows the elderly waiting for workers to save their lives by moving them to the upper floors of the building.
They are blurring moments because, minute by minute, a water full of mud and dirt keeps rising and already exceeds the wheels of the chairs in which almost all the elderly people are. It’s a cruel fight against the clock starring some employees who posted the videos as a cry for help that didn’t get a response. This tragic outcome resulted in six fatalities. The scenes are particularly painful because they are played by the most dependent people, those who cannot fend for themselves although in the past they made possible what we are today. That’s why their panicked screams are especially chilling and their suffering is so unfair.
Helpless and with no time to react, the workers of a residence in Paiporta had to carry the hundred old people up to the first floor alone. At the end, however, they did a count and six people were missing. At that time, the ground floor already accumulated more than a meter and a half of water. It was already late and what the images foretold came true: Maribel Albalat, mayor of Paiporta, confirmed the death of six of the 115 grandparents who lived in this center. This is the municipality most hit by the DANA with at least 62 deaths, more than a third of those compatible with the provisional balance of the catastrophe in the Valencian Country.
ARA has been able to speak with the family member of a worker, who requests to remain anonymous because, according to him, the company has threatened them that, if they report what happened to the media, they will suffer reprisals. The reproaches of the employees are also addressed to the Generalitat Valenciana, since they assure that at 7 pm the phone of the Emergency Service did not give a signal.
The relative with whom this newspaper was able to speak assures that the company that would have coerced the employees is Savia, which has 22 centers in the Valencian Country. This witness explains how during the afternoon and night of Tuesday they did not receive help from any manager or command of the company. Quite the contrary, the next day they were severely scolded by the head of maintenance, who blamed them for the deaths. To verify the workers’ version, the ARA has contacted the company, but it has postponed any statement until later, a circumstance that ultimately did not occur.
Confirmation of the drama occurred when the emergency services arrived in the morning. Hours later the elderly who survived were transferred to other residences of the company, as explained to TVE Juan Matías Castillo, son of a person admitted. “They have asked us from the company to let them work and not to call any more. I don’t know anything,” he admitted. Moments of panic were also experienced at the Massanassa residence. Anxiety and fear were identical. Screams and signs of panic as the water continued to rise, threatening dozens of elderly people who, sitting in their wheelchairs, screamed helplessly. Fortunately there were no casualties. This has been confirmed by the company Solimar, owner of the facility.
Those in charge of the center have detailed that they were incommunicado, but that they have already partially recovered drinking water and electricity service. In addition, they have had the assistance of two doctors from La Fe hospital in Valencia and two nurses from the company. They also have a supply of drugs and the Generalitat Valenciana has sent them food.
The challenge of identifying victims
In the last two days the number of fatalities has not stopped growing. The priority is the lifting of corpses on the public road and in the affected buildings. The city’s Institute of Legal Medicine has nine forensic teams, to which are added eight other forensic experts and an assistant from the Ministry of Justice. Also working in the area are five coroners and an autopsy assistant from Alicante, five coroners from Castellón, five from Murcia and two from the Balearic Islands. The exceptional nature of the situation has led to the duty courts delegating the procedures directly to the forensics and the police. Once they are lifted, the bodies are sent to the City of Justice in Valencia. But it has remained small.
Now these people are waiting to be identified in an underground floor of the car park, enabled to deal with the lack of space to accommodate the hundreds of fatalities that the cold drop has caused in the community. However, this Thursday evening the Spanish government announced that “there is no room for more deaths”, which is why the Fira Valencia will also be enabled to be used as a repository for corpses. The device is completed with the headquarters of the National Police and the central barracks of the Civil Guard in Valencia, where relatives who are desperately searching for their missing relatives will be able to provide data that will help with identification.
Faced with this emergency that “exceeds all the usual magnitudes”, in the words of the director of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia, Eneko Barberia, Catalonia has also offered help and has a forensic team of eight people ready to send – them in Valencia if necessary. While waiting for the authorities to finish discerning the support they need, Barberia adds in statements to the ARA that, if this team is finally to be sent, it will be necessary to take into account the state of the communication channels in order to – get there
Endorsed scientific methods
Both Catalonia and the Valencian Community, explains Barberia, have specific protocols in the face of a catastrophe with multiple victims that establish the methodology for identifying the bodies. In any case, he clarifies, one of the supported scientific methods must always be used: fingerprints, forensic dentistry and DNA, which in that order are the simplest, fastest and cheapest. Barberia believes that the vast majority of DANA victims will be able to be identified by their fingerprints, because they will be Spanish nationals who will have registered their fingerprints when they got their ID.
The task of the forensics is also out of the ordinary in this case regarding the process of lifting the corpses. Two days after the impact of the DANA, the number of victims continues to climb as emergency teams find the bodies that have been missing. “The volume and the geographical dimension is very important, there are many people trapped in motorways, vehicles, streams… They will have to carry out surveys and prepare bigger teams than usual”, Barberia assesses.
All of this will also lead to a greater impact than usual for these professionals. Barberia believes that, in addition to ensuring relief in shifts to avoid the saturation of professionals, it would be convenient for the forensics to have a psychological support space after the emergency where they can talk about what they have experienced, a need that reminds Catalonia activated for the first time after the 17-A attacks.
