Kilkenny woman's home destroyed in freak floods in Spain

A Kilkenny woman whose home was destroyed in the floods that ravaged Valencia in Spain last week said that it is 'unforgivable' that the Spanish authorities did not give people adequate warning of the freak weather event.

Between 9pm on Tuesday night last and 5am the following morning, Gabrielle Tallent who is from Kilkenny and her husband, Vicent and their three young children lost their home and car to the floods that destroyed their village of Aldaia in Valenica.

"The water just came and went, it started around 8.55pm and by 5am it was gone," said Gabrielle who added that her family are among the 'lucky ones'.

"No one could possibly imagine the amount of water that came. It was like a wave just coming up the street, it came at such a speed."

Gabrielle's husband managed to bring their children to safety in a neighbour's house which was better protected from the floods and Gabrielle and her husband then managed to climb up stairs onto their roof with their cat, Salvador, who also survived the terrifying ordeal.

"At the moment we are staying with my in-laws, who live five minutes from our home and fortunately were not affected. We were in the process of renovating a house so we will move there, I don't want to go back to our old home.

"Why would we bother, it could happen again, every house in every street in the area is destroyed. The magnitude of the disaster is monumental.

"I have lived here in Valencia since 2008 and have never seen anything like this, nothing like this has happened in living memory.

Gabrielle is critical of the authorities who she said failed to give adequate warnings.

"There is all this loss of life, a friend of mine's mother drowned and I know of another mother and daughter who died in their car. It is unforgivable that proper warnings were not given and because of that all these people have died. We were lucky that we had a stairs and could get up on the roof. You could not get out the front door with the weight of the water."

Gabrielle said that while there is a clean up operation in place it is through the work of volunteers and not the army.

"The army are somewhere, but they are not here," she said. 

"The people who have come to help are volunteers and the amount of volunteers is truely amazing and uplifting," she added.