The haze 3 months after the Valencia floods

Three months have passed since a huge flood that caused vast destruction in 75 municipalities in the province of Valencia, east of Spain.

On that 29 October, rains that accumulated up to 700 litres per square metre in inland areas landed furiously in ravines that completely flooded an area next to the sea inhabited by more than 150,000 people.

The water marks, still visible today on many walls, show that the water was almost everywhere over one metre high, and rose up to 3 metres (up to the first floor balcony) in heavily inhabited areas such as the centre of Paiporta, the town where I live with my family.

Totally unexpectedly and without the necessary alarm from the authorities, a mixture of water, mud, logs and tons of rubbish took us all thousands of people by surprise.

[photo_footer] Image in January 2025 of the Poio ravine, which burst its banks in Paiporta on 29 October 2024, killing at least 45 people. / Photo: Joel Forster [/photo_footer].

Each of us has a story to tell about ‘where I was that day’. 232 people died that evening in the region, and the injured overwhelmed Valencia’s hospitals.

Today, as January comes to an end, hundreds of families are still living with relatives or friends far from home, or renting a room, because their ground floor flat or their house in the rural huerta is still not habitable.

All the buildings that were hit by the ‘waves’ are still damaged. Thousands of them. There are no lifts for the elderly and outside the cars that are indispensable for getting around are parked wherever they can, as the underground garages are still inoperative.

More than half of the family-run businesses located on the ground floor have still not been able to open, leading some to put farewell notes next to their empty premises, explaining that they just lack the strength to start again.

[photo_footer] A note from the owner of a butcher's shop in the centre of Paiporta announces its definitive closure. / Photo: Tabea Forster [/photo_footer].

Work continues to make schools, parks, libraries, public transport, and other services fully available again. The military continues to work in groups in the streets. Tractors and water tankers are also working every day.

The air quality is still bad on many days, and when it’s windy everything fills with a new thick layer of dust, from the solidified mud.

[photo_footer] An unrepaired vehicle lift in Paiporta, January 2025. / Photo: Joel Forster[/photo_footer].

It’s been three, months, but ‘it feels like a year’, a father was telling me this morning as he dropped his two young children off on the bus to another school in a nearby unaffected town.

Three months on, the feeling is that although almost everyone is back to their weekly routines, there is a haze over our heads that we can’t shake off. There is the loss of comfort: the town surely is not what it used to be. There is the indignation with politicians.

But there are also the unresolved questions: Why am I alive and others are not? Why did I only lose my car and a few belongings while others lost their entire house and their greengrocer's shop, or their hair salon or plumber’s shop?

Is it fate? Is it luck? Is it the meaninglessness of life? Why does God allow these things? The answers, when you see the disaster at first hand, stick in your throat a little, they don't come easily.

And yet, as Christians, we have experienced first-hand the strength of a hope that is beyond our efforts. Those of us who live in these towns (Paiporta, Picanya, Catarroja, Sedaví, Torrent, Alfafar, Massanassa, Sedaví, Benetússer...) have a notion of fragility that we did not have before. It is in this reality that the good news of the gospel makes more sense, not less. 

How incredible to have the conviction that there is a God who is stable when everything is falling apart. And not only that, but provides for the needy and offers an immovable hope for the one who wonders how things will be in the future.

How incredible to experience the accompaniment, the embrace, the sacrificial service of so many others who are part of the church not just in Valencia, but in Spain and abroad. The financial generosity, the real concern. The church (not the institution, but the body) is a fantastic invention of God.

Friends ask us these days how to help now. My answer, I think, is prayer. Prayer means not forgetting people and situations.

And praying means asking God to keep doing what He does best: meeting people wherever they are, whatever they think, whatever they suffer. God meets us in the midst of the mist.

May He continue to work and may we somehow be part of His plan. Because the life Jesus  brings is life unfloodable.

Joel Forster, Paiporta resident, director of Evangelical Focus.

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