The Curriculum

What do we need to know?

The first signs of water appeared in the streets at about 7.40pm. By 7.50pm, garages were inundated, and cars, trucks, and lorries were being thrown around in the torrent.

…

As I drove back from school, the sky was black and the winds were high. The street lights were playing catch-up, adding to the apocalyptic vibes.

My five-year-old had had basketball practice, so he, I, and my two-year-old left school at about 6.30pm. It’s a half-hour drive southward into Valencia.

I phoned my wife who was at her parents’ in Silla, a town twenty minutes further south of the city. There had been weather warnings, but it wasn’t raining. I asked her if it was raining where she was. She looked out the window and told me it wasn’t. I said I’d come and collect her, assuming that it was safe as long as it didn’t start to rain. The hundreds of others making similar journeys probably made similar assumptions.

It would have been good to know that the threat wasn’t coming from the sky. It would have been good to have a decent enough grasp of geography to understand that the threat was, at that moment, hurtling down the pretty mountains that cradle the flat coastal plain of Valencia.

I picked up my wife, and we headed back towards the city. The traffic on the other side of the motorway, coming out of the city, had already come to a standstill.

Fifteen minutes later the cars, trucks, lorries in that jam had been swept into a heap, with seemingly no less ease than when I scoop my son’s toy cars into a pile with my foot.

What happened to the people in those vehicles haunts me. I wouldn’t have known what to do. I wouldn’t have known how to save the lives of my children.

It would have been good to know that just 15cm of water is enough to stall the car or compromise steering. It would have been useful to have a good enough grasp of physics to realise that 30cm is enough to float most vehicles, or that 60cm of rushing water is enough to sweep away even heavy trucks.

What those drivers would have given to know it takes just ten minutes for a flash flood to reach over a metre in depth, that they should escape to higher ground at the first sign of flooding, especially if it isn’t raining.

To have known that we mustn’t head down to collect our cars in underground garages or car parks.

If only someone with sufficient meteorological and geological expertise had had the nous and authority to sound the mobile phone alert before the floods hit —rather than twenty minutes afterwards.

These things it would have been good to know. But I suppose there are always limits to what the curriculum can cover.

…

I’m writing this on the Friday after the floods. It’s a bank holiday here in Valencia today.

The affected areas, a few km south of where I live, are inaccessible by car. The inhabitants of La Torre, Sedavi, Paiporta, Alfafar and the surrounding areas are still without electricity and running water.

But collection points for donations of food have queues of people outside waiting to hand over their offerings. Supermarket shelves have been cleaned out of anything that might be of use to our afflicted neighbours.

Tens of thousands of people have crossed the bridge on foot into La Torre bearing brooms and spades, carrying water and supplies.

A checkpoint has been set up at a local church in the area to organise wave after wave of volunteers.

No one knows —can know– how to make this right. It can’t be made right. But those in the queues at the collection points, in the throngs heading over the bridge into La Torre do know something of incalculable value.

I am of the opinion that the relatively modern concepts of selflessness and altruism have done untold harm. Taking the opportunity to help others is, contrary to what such concepts imply, perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

I genuinely don’t mean this in any earnest or moral or pious way, but it is a central feature of our nature that, just as we want to be party to the gossip, just as we want to have the answers, or to show off our skills, just as we want to be a protagonist, just as we want all these things, we want to be of use to one another.

Unfortunately, we can’t always see it. It can take a tragedy like this to wash the scales from our eyes, to teach us.

The greatest satisfaction, fulfilment, nourishment, comfort, and even joy is to be found in the service of others. This is, I think, essential to know.

Postscript: The bridge into La Torre has, at the request of the youth council of Valencia, has been renamed El Puente de la Solidaridad (The Bridge of Solidarity).