Family left with nothing forced to salvage precious memories after home devastated by Spain floods
From filthy mud-caked bags Isabel picks through the only belongings she has left in the world.
Grimy clothes and broken furniture among the remnants left behind by the flood in the Spanish city of Torrent.
She picks up some nail varnish.
“What a disaster,” she says.
The river to her house filled with water during Tuesday’s flash flooding until it smashed through the front door and burst out through the wall.
The home to three generations of her family didn’t stand a chance.
“I didn’t have time to grab anything. Not even a backpack with a laptop, clothes nothing,” she says.
Her brother Angel shows us around the wreckage.
The lights have gone, so have the windows and some of the walls.
The loss is monumental.
The family live in Torrent in flood-hit Valencia
Angel says the noise of the flood water was ‘terrifying’
He says the water came up to the ceiling and the level just kept on rising.
“There was so much water and it came with such force, it was terrifying. The noise it made was incredible,” Angel tells me.
The deluge was so ferocious it took out the bridge next door.
The family only got out alive because they took themselves to higher ground when the water started to rise, they didn’t wait for the official warning.
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In the living room, Angel’s sister Amparo tries to find anything that can be salvaged.
The flood took the house but also the memories – precious reminders of a mum and dad who are no longer here.
Amparo searches through the wreckage for items belonging to her parents
“There are things from my mother,” she says through tears after going through broken crockery.
“I didn’t take them to my house where I live and I thought they had all been lost but at least some are there.”
In every room friends and volunteers try to clear the mess but the sense of loss and grief is enormous.
Isabel and her family are now homeless and have no idea for how long.
“I came to the house with my dogs and they wanted to go in but we can’t go home,” she says.
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This is one story of loss.
A snapshot of grief in a country where millions are mourning.
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