In some of my publications I have told you that three of my children left Venezuela, the country where I live, and now they are in Spain leading a new life.
Having them there has represented a great emotional challenge for me, it has not been easy for me to adapt to this situation that continues to be hard for everyone in the family.
But the worst thing is when one feels that they may be at risk, as has been the case in the last few days. They all live in the South of Spain, an area that has been hit hard by atmospheric phenomena that have caused major floods.
Since Monday, October 28th, I started to worry, I saw the weather reports announcing the possibility of torrential rains towards the area of Malaga where my third son lives with his wife.
That day I contacted him and began to give him all possible recommendations. Convincing him to take the necessary precautions was very easy, he has spent most of his life here in Venezuela where floods are very frequent, here we learn to live with that, but there in Malaga where he is now it is not like that, there it rains very little.
Since that Monday night I did not lose communication with him for a moment and to keep me awake I went to the best friend you can have in cases like this, a big thermos of coffee. I have lost count of the cups of coffee I have had while I have been keeping track of the information coming through the internet.
On Tuesday my son had received an alert on his phone, it told him that big rains were coming but no ban had been decreed. He made the comment to me via Whatsapp and I told him if they could stay home, but they decided to go to work.
When he was coming from picking up his wife the rain started to pick up and the streets started to fill with water. In our conversations we had talked about that possibility and about the best thing to do in case the rain caught him on the street.
As we watched the water rise, my son had time to get to an embankment on a high spot. He left the car parked and went with his wife to a nearby building where the neighbors let him go up to the second floor. There he waited for the rain to pass. Fortunately the water did not reach where his vehicle was parked.
While all this was going on we never stopped communicating. I drank coffee and called him every twenty minutes until he was able to get home in the early hours of the morning.
Last Sunday night was another sleepless night. Since Saturday the alerts were being issued for the Catalonia area, where my other two children live. On Sunday morning both of my children received the alert message on their phones, and this time they were told that there would be restrictions for the circulation of vehicles from noon onwards.
I spoke to my daughter and told her to go to her brother's house, who lives in a higher area of the city, she lives on the edge of the beach where the risk of flooding is higher. I told my son not to keep the car in the parking lot, that it was safer in the street.
Fortunately, in their area there was no incident, but I spent that whole night in constant communication with my daughter, she could not sleep either and, like me, she was glued to a cup of hot coffee.
The storm has not yet passed, although it is expected that the rains will diminish in the next few days. Until everything is back to normal I will remain glued to the internet, taking small sips of very hot coffee, the best thing I can do to calm my nerves in a situation like this.
Thanks for your time.
Images edited in Canva and Photoshop.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version).
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