‘I felt that Pichincha was coming at us’

About the barrage that left more than twenty deaddozens of injuries and enormous material damage in La Comuna and La Gasca, landslides of low, medium or high intensity have been a constant on the slopes of Pichincha and have affected the neighborhoods located on the western side of Quito.

On Thursday, February 25, 1975, La Gasca already experienced a similar tragedy when the force of the water and mud took everything in its path. It was not as devastating as the flood of January 31 of this year, but those who remember it tell of the experience of it still with panic and desolation.

Susana Roldán: The first thing I thought was that it was an earthquake

Susana Roldán, accountant and textile businesswoman, lived 39 years in the streets La Gasca and Ritter. She moved because she was widowed. Her daughters got married and her house was already too big for her. However, he keeps La Gasca in his memory as a quiet, middle-class, well-maintained and safe neighborhood.

He loved to watch from the window of his house cotopaxi volcano. At that time, he says, “La Gasca was the north of Quito; she could walk easily… ”. Until the flood of 1975 turned on the alerts about the safety of the area.

Today this woman he is 75 years old and remembers that at that time she had two girls and was pregnant with her third daughter.

“I was at home with my two daughters and an employee. Suddenly, I felt that the house, even though it was big, was moving. There was a tremendous noise, which is impossible to describe. that time I I thought it was an earthquake.”

He took the girls and wanted to leave the house. When she opened the door, she saw that water was coming down “down the same street that the flood came down on Monday (January 31)”.

He will never forget that when he looked up, “The mud was taking a car like a box of matches.” Instantly, he imagined the worst: that the water was going to hit his house. “I felt that Pichincha was coming at us”.

From the top floor, where he lived, he ran downstairs to escape with the girls. “My idea was to cross to the house in front, but when I opened the door that led to the main street I saw a impressive amount of water. Fortunately, my house had some entrance steps and that prevented it from flooding.

He closed the door and outside, the mud “It wasn’t carrying stones, but rocks, huge rocks, at an amazing speed.”

It felt “prisoner and anguished”she says, because in the face of the natural disaster that was in front of her eyes at any moment she could be swept away by the current, along with her two scared little girls, who would not stop crying.

That great scare ended when the force of the waters diminished and the moment of greatest risk passed. However, the house was damaged, because the sediments had collapsed the back wall of the house, which was flooded.

Patricio Torres Silva: My children were saved by a captain and a painter

“My children are miraculously alive.” This is how you sum up your experience. Patricio Torres, 79 years old. In the seventies he worked as a journalist for Trade and when the alluvium occurred he lived in La Gasca, with his wife and children.

“It was a very nice neighborhood, full of gardens, with many amenities, from where you could see Quito in its fullness. Many soldiers lived there.

He relates that the afternoon of February 25, 1975, in his capacity as a reporter, went to a press conference. There his friend Luis Mejía Montesdeoca told him that something serious had happened in La Gasca, but he had no further details.

Patricio looked for a phone to call home, but nobody answered him. She went into despair.

“I got worried and grabbed my car.” Along the way she saw how mud covered the street to get to your house. “I don’t know how, but I got there; the desperation to see that my children and my wife are okay was stronger than feeling how the car was sinking as it went through the mud.”

When he finally arrived, he saw the barrage dimension and yours, hopefully, safe. “It was a apocalyptic sceneI felt a brutal fear, but when I saw my children sitting on the steps of a neighboring house, I calmed down”.

His son Diego, who was 9 years old, had been the one who took the initiative. “He told me that he was doing his homework at a desk near the living room when suddenly everything had darkened and the windows began to break.”

After the scare of the noise, the mud, which had broken the fence of the garden, began to get in everywhere.

Little Diego ran to the upper part of the house, but he realized that his younger brothers, ages 7 and 5, were not there. He went down the bleachers and managed to get them out. Of those hustle, just remember “a fierce noise.”

When the three brothers were together – Patricio recalls – they were rescued by an Army captain, who was a neighbor, and a master painter who had worked in the house a week before. “They had gotten into the mud and they managed to get the kids out and took them to their house. That’s why I say that My children are miraculously alive.”

This retired journalist believes that at least a few ten or twelve houses were flooded that day and that there were logs and rocks all over La Gasca Avenue. The sediments reached until August 10. “Of course with less intensity compared to what happened now; my house was able to withstand the flood.” (I)