Local effort underway to help flood victims in Spain

Desperately wanting to do the right thing and show support for his fellow flood-stricken Spaniards, Key Biscayne's Chesco Sanchez is calling for help from the local Spanish community by co-organizing a fund-raising effort for communities that have been "gravely affected."

Meteorologists said "a year's worth of rain" fell in eight hours on Oct. 29, leading to at least 217 deaths, most of them in the Valencia region of Spain, where 10,000 troops are reportedly on the scene still searching for missing persons.

"This initiative is very special for us, not only to support our fellow compatriots during a critical time, but also to demonstrate solidarity and cohesiveness of the entire Spanish community worldwide," said Sanchez, who was born and raised in Murcia before moving to Key Biscayne in 2010.

The flooding has led to devastating losses in Valencia, Castilla-La Mancha, and other regions in Spain.

The GoFundMe page, with a goal of raising $100,000, is sponsored by the Bernardo de Galvez Business Club , a South Florida-based investment group focused on Spanish-origin business entering the U.S. market.

"There's a Valencia community of people here on Key Biscayne, so this is teamwork, not just me doing it," Sanchez said. "It doesn't matter how large or small the contribution is, but it could make a big difference for those who have lost their homes, belongings and their livelihoods. The mother nation would gratefully accept the support from us in these difficult times."

Sanchez said the Valencia region of Spain isn't impacted by hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes.

"So, this is something unique," he said. "When we first heard about it, you hear flooding, and you think, yes, this is bad, but every day the news kept getting worse. Water was covering houses, people were stuck in their cars. You can imagine this is a small village, like Key Biscayne, next to the city. These are more like working-class people. They don't have too many resources, so it was like a drama (for them)."

After nearly two years of droughts in Spain, the downpours (one report showed 19 inches of rain in eight hours fell in Chiva, just west of Valencia) could not be absorbed by the hardened soil.

The region of Valencia had gone through two other major destructive storm systems as far back as the 1980s, one in 1982 that killed nearly 30 people, and another five years later that broke rainfall records.

The last comparable disaster in Spain was in 1996, when 87 people died near a town in the Pyrenees mountains.