AN inquiry into the response to the 2024 Valencia flood disaster has raised the official death toll figure to 231.
Catarroja investigating judge, Nuria Ruiz, has now included an elderly man who suffered a heart attack at his Benestusser home on the day of the floods- October 29.
Ruiz requested a forensic report from the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) to see if there was a direct link between his death and the flooding.
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The IML said that acute stress suffered as a result of the emergency may have been a factor in his death.
The forensic medical report extensively detailed the existence of nine years of high blood pressure (from 2015 to 2024) and advanced age- conditions that cause arteriosclerosis.
The man was at home on the day of the disaster, and was in his bed ‘very scared with what was happening, reporting dizziness, nerves and pain in the pit of his stomach’.
A neighbour who was with him called 112 without getting an answer and administered paracetamol.
She then discovered that he was not breathing and tried to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which was unsuccessful.
Judge Ruiz ruled: “The stressful circumstances of such magnitude as what happened in the Dana, which were based on a previous pathological state, led to the death from an acute myocardial infarction on October 29, 2024, given the situation he was experiencing and that he was watching from his home.”
She annulled a dismissal previously agreed to in other preliminary proceedings relating to the man’s death.
It means his case joins other flood victims in regard to the investigation of alleged crimes of homicide and injuries due to recklessness.
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