On the afternoon of Tuesday 5th, in the Fire Station, the final preparations were being made to leave for Valencia. The group of four firefighters from Mijas left on Tuesday for the epicentre of the tragedy, where they will join their colleague who is already at the scene. Although they have a lot of experience the uncertainty of what they will find there is still present.

"On the one hand, we feel the need and the enthusiasm of being able to do our bit as firefighters, bringing specific machinery and specific knowledge to be able to join the colleagues who have been working there since day one, and on the other hand, we are very sad about what has happened, not knowing what we are going to find, because there is a lot of contradictory information", said the firefighter José Guillermo Cabello.

They receive information from all sides that fills them, they say, with uncertainty; what they do know is that their obligation is to be where they are needed.

"We are going to spend the night in an area in the Albufera, similar to a campsite, and we will meet there with colleagues from Malaga, the Town Hall and the Provincial Consortium", explained Cabello.

On Tuesday they loaded the vehicles with all the tools they think might be useful in a tragedy like this, and on Wednesday they are scheduled to be assigned to the work they will have to carry out.

"Given what they are asking us to do, we are mainly going to be doing dewatering, so we have vehicles for that; one of them is an all-terrain vehicle with a trailer hooked up to it with a powerful pump and another is an auxiliary vehicle that is loaded with a lot of different material, such as different pumps, rescue material... If we have to get into a river we have to use rescue equipment, if we have to rescue people, we also have equipment for that", explained the sergeant of the Mijas Fire Brigade. Manolo Morales.

"Everyone wanted to go because, the truth is that solidarity in this country is great, but organisation is essential; the first few days were chaotic, it was very difficult and very complicated to send personnel or vehicles without control. It is already organised, there are groups already there, because this is not for one day, this is going to be weeks and months, this is going to take a long time and there will have to be reliefs and it has to be done in groups, colleagues from other stations have been there for several days, now we are and later on other colleagues", Morales explained.

Hugs, nerves and encouragement are also loaded in their vehicles, which left on Tuesday afternoon to help in any way possible. On Saturday, there in Valencia, other colleagues will take over from them.

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