A university student from Lanzarote, who prefers to remain anonymous, participated for three days in volunteer work in different Valencian towns after the passage of the DANA that has left more than 200 dead in the autonomous community.
In his first year of university, this young man joined a hundred students from his residence and left from Thursday to Saturday in different organized groups to help remove mud from premises and homes.
"We have been through La Torre, Massanassa, Paiporta and Catarroja, seeing where more help was needed," he said in statements to La Voz. The first day they reached it by car to the point closest to one of the neighborhoods, given the problems in the road connections. The rest has gone by public transport.
The students organized themselves into groups of five or ten people and began asking neighbors in the streets if they needed help. "We were going as we could, with some shoes that you didn't have much affection for and then they would leave you sticks and brushes there," he continues, the following days they did start using "masks and gloves" because they were warned of the presence of bacteria in the mud.
While on Thursday they did not find military or state security forces in the area, they did the rest of the days when they moved to the place were already operating in the towns and even gave them some indication of how to act.
"People were surprised when we offered them help, in those first moments the volunteers had not yet arrived," referring to the flood of people who moved on Friday, November 1 to collaborate with the affected towns. One of the things that surprised him the most upon arrival in the area was "the cars in the middle of the road and the level to which the water reached." In addition, he highlights the sensation of passing by the flooded garages: "The first days you look, then when you know that they start taking out corpses it gives you goosebumps."
To conclude, this young man exposes the need not to believe everything that is published on social networks. "There are many hoaxes, it is very difficult to believe and there are things that are a lie."