The sisters Elvira and Lala Martín González, together with their father Vitaliano Martín -89 years old-, receive a visit at the entrance of the same house that on this day 20 years ago was flooded by the water that transformed the center of the neighborhood of The Rosarito in a pool. Cars leaked, regardless of their age. Even the vehicle of one of his relatives, recently bought 3 months ago, was left in the quagmire. It was the flood of 31M, one of the worst waterspouts in memory in Santa Cruz.
From the mouth of Elvira, and her family, only words of gratitude come out both to the administrations, for the immediate response they received in the form of aid, as well as to the colleagues of the JSP company where they had worked up to three years before the flood of the March 31 and that, as soon as they found out that they had lost everything, they set up a collection of money to come to their aid. “Even the colleagues from the company based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria raised money to help us, that’s why I can’t say anything when there are those who complain that official aid doesn’t arrive. In my case, we receive both the official ones and the private ones”, says Elvira. She is still moved when she remembers that JSP, from which she had already disassociated herself, sent all the dairy products that she sells to her home.
«The whole neighborhood was turned into a swimming pool; we took my mother through the roof»
A mother of two children at that time –they were 14 and 6 years old at the time–, she remembers that with her husband, José Juan, they went for a walk to the slaughterhouse to enjoy the summer day of March 31, until some drops began to fall and they decided return home in anticipation of rain. But they never thought it would be so much. The couple and their children lived in Elvira’s house, at number 4 Calle San José, together with their maternal grandparents, Vitaliano Martín and Brígida, as well as Lala and Tomás, Elvira’s brothers, although as the day It was good, they had also left.
He remembers that when he got home he went to the bathroom and felt a stream of water coming out of the cup that overflowed the toilet. At that time, the highway that connects the area of Santa María del Mar to Las Chumberas was already operational, and El Rosarito had remained inside a hole, without channeling rainwater. “In a matter of two hours all this was flooded. The water rose to the height of the window and the pressure of a runoff that crept in from behind burst an old wooden door, so the access floor to the house quickly flooded,” explains Elvira, adding that her mother He had to receive help from relatives and neighbors to get out through the roof to another neighboring construction.
It so happens that most of the land in the heart of El Rosarito was owned by Juan González and María Ramos, Elvira’s maternal grandparents. They had ten children and each one was given a plot to build her own house, so they can boast of living as a family.
Elvira picks up the story. “My husband was trapped by the water after the back door burst. Everything was a pool and even the force of the mud pushed a large refrigerator. My six-year-old son was up to his neck in water », she specifies. He remembers that when the little boy found out that his mother had bought a flat in the El Draguillo area, the first question she asked him was if it was a first floor and therefore there would be a risk of water seeping in in the event that the flood was repeated. “Don’t worry, it’s a third party,” Elvira replied, already with the perspective of time, with a smile and hoping that the flood would not happen again.
“I had such a bad time that I developed psoriasis that I still suffer from today,” he explains with the complicity of his father, Vitaliano, who at 89 years of age can boast of being a fighter for life, as he demonstrated by working in agriculture, both in the cultivation of banana trees and tomaderos, as in the construction sector in the beam factory.
For Elvira the problem was that the water ran down the slope and, on top of that, they had sealed the ravine to make the highway and altered the route, which prevented the water from evacuating. And she has words of grief and remembrance for the deceased in the Los Andenes area.
Now, when an alert is announced, “we can’t stay because they come on the go to check the sewers. Important works have also been carried out in the channeling of the ravine to guarantee the drainage of the water, ”they say, while Vitaliano himself, who rushes his krüger, discreetly approaches where the work was carried out, as if supervising that there is no incident. “For a long time we suffered from psychosis. We heard it raining and we got on our nerves.”
In El Rosario, the vocation of what is now the councilor of the Southwest, Javier Rivero, was hardened. At the age of 14 and as a member of the neighborhood association, he immortalized in his photographs the state of the houses of his neighbors who helped document the request for aid. that they received from the Cabildo, when cell phones did not exist then.
