No victims have been found in the 50 vehicles recovered so far by the military of the Army Emergency Unit (UME), who are examining the underground parking lot of the large Bonaire shopping center, located in Aldaia. This information was provided by a spokesperson for the UME. There were fears that the car park, which has 1,800 underground spaces and a total of 5,700 spaces, could have become a huge graveyard of water and mud for customers and staff. The shopping centre is advertised as “the largest in Europe”. However, inspections carried out by diving teams, after the Ume pumped out an underground area of 2,000 square metres, have refuted the most dramatic predictions.
Aldaia Mayor Guillermo Luna said the car park may have been at “a minimum level of occupancy” when the area was submerged under a sea of mud on Tuesday. Following the anger and protests that erupted yesterday in Paiporta, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, accompanied by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the governor of Valencia, Carlos Mazon, interrupted their visit to the areas most affected by the floods in Spain. In response to the crisis, the monarch changed his official agenda to preside over the meeting of the command center of the Army Military Unit (Ume) in Torrejon de Ardoz (Madrid).
“Felipe, don’t abandon us”, shouted the affected citizens in Paiporta. Despite the mud and objects thrown at the official entourage, Felipe VI listened to the population’s pleas for help and assured that “the State in its entirety is and will be present” in the municipalities devastated by the floods to deal with the catastrophe. The monarchs' visit to Paiporta and Chiva, considered the ‘ground zero’ of the areas affected by Dana, was undertaken on their own initiative to express solidarity with the families affected. This visit had initially been discouraged for security reasons, according to government sources reported by various Iberian media, including El Pais.
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