SEDAVI, Spain (AP) — Francisco Murgui went out to try to salvage his motorbike when the water started to rise. He never came back. One week after catastrophic , María Murgui still holds out hope that her father is alive and among the unknown number of the missing.
“He was like many people in town who went out to get their car or motorbike to safety,” the 27-year-old told The Associated Press. “The flash flood caught him outside, and he had to cling to a tree in order to escape drowning. He called us to tell us that he was fine, that we shouldn’t worry.
” But when María set out into the streets of Sedaví to try to rescue him from the , he was nowhere to be found. “He held up until 1 in the morning,” she said. “By 2, I went outside with a neighbor and a rope to try to locate him.
But we couldn’t find him. And since then, we haven’t heard anything about him.” At least 218 have been confirmed dead after a deluge caused by heavy rains late on Oct.
29 and the next morning swamped entire communities, mostly in Spain’s Valencia region, catching most off guard. Regional authorities have been for having issued alerts to mobile phones some two hours after the disaster had started. Authorities have yet to any give an estimate of the missing seven days on.
Spanish state broadcaster RTVE, however, shows a steady stream of appeals by people who are searching for family members who are not accounted for. María Murgui herself has posted a missing person’s me.