• Jesús Lucero Ezquerro, who lives in Valencia, couldn’t believe it when he saw the damage caused by the flood.
• People in the path of the waters had little advance warning, he said.
• Ezquerro said his city was caught off guard compared to how U.S. states prepared for extreme weather.

This article, as told, is based on a conversation with Jesús Lucero Ezquerro, a 28-year-old resident of the Poblats Marítims district of Valencia, Spain.

The region was devastated flash flood. Ezquerro spoke to BI on Thursday. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been living in Valencia for four years. On Monday, everything seemed normal; literally nothing happened.

But by 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, things started to get ugly in most of the state. It started to rain and it started to get very windy.

Around 19:30 in the evening, we started receiving messages from local officials warning us about heavy rain and urging us to stay home.

I said to myself: “Holy cow! But it’s not raining here.” I’m north of the Turia river in Valencia, so I wasn’t affected and it barely rained.

I was shocked and alarmed by the images I began to see on social media of people south of the river. People jammed treespeople suffering from flood with ropepeople she screams.

I didn’t have a car or vehicle when the storm hit, so I couldn’t do anything but stay where I was. Since I had nothing to worry about and I lived on the fifth floor of my building, I wasn’t afraid.

But I was and still am concerned about those affected and the loss of innocent lives. The storm had already hit when the warnings came.

return to the Middle Ages

The next day, a friend and I cycled to see the damage in southern Valencia, which was hardest hit by the storm.

The metropolitan transportation system collapsed, subways were flooded, and buses could not reach some areas.

Before we even reached the area, we saw trucks and cars gathered on the road south of the river like toppling dominoes.

The streets were filled with dirt and covered with mud and water. People south of the river had neither power nor signals. It was like going back to the Middle Ages.

We also helped a group of young people clean the sidewalk. We were covered in mud up to our eyebrows.

The police were there but there were almost no emergency services in the area as they were rescuing people at risk.

Friends’ cars disappeared. Some have garages full of water and mud that they clean up. I don’t know anyone close to me who died.

We returned home in shock, accepting everything.

left behind

I’m frustrated and angry.

I have a background in marine environmental emergencies and bushfire management and am currently working on a fire suppression management and bushfire prevention project for a company.

So I’m not a firefighter or a member of the military, but I have worked on environmental emergencies from an intelligence gathering perspective.

I know how to evacuate people, manage populations, and deal with adverse situations. However, this did not happen in Valencia.

worse than that Hurricane Milton

I remember watching the news of Hurricane Milton hitting Florida last month and how Floridians were preparing for it.

Residents covered their windows with large wooden panels; Store owners were preparing for this and people were evacuated.

The mayor of Tampa even urged people to leave the area and said anyone who stayed would die.

After Hurricane Milton There were at least 16 deaths. By the way, in Valencia this number is already 10 times higher.

The Spanish Meteorological Agency published a statement. warning days in advance storm. But nothing happened on Tuesday. There was absolute calm in the morning. People were going to work and university. The storm was already underway when local alerts arrived.

A wake up call

Undoubtedly, human mistakes were made. I’ve never seen anything like it.

It is terrible that this could happen in a country like Spain, with the opportunities, institutions and intelligence we have.

At one point officials were saying 50 dead, then 60, then 70, then 90 dead. That doesn’t seem like much to me. I believe that when the water recedes and the mud clears, more bodies will be found.