Excited hugs between customers and workers at the Carrefour that swept the Dana and is now reopening
It is very difficult to remember the recent tragedy without getting emotional. To recover a certain normality without looking back. This is what happened this Tuesday morning at the reopening of the Carrefour hypermarket in Alfafar, which was destroyed, flooded, due to the flood of October 29. The water level reached three meters high. Almost four months later, customers have returned to enter its renovated facilities and many of them, elderly people, could not hold back their tears while pushing their shopping carts or hugging some of the workers.
“We have been coming here since it opened 49 years ago and we missed it. In the end, you make friends among the employees,” said Mari, a resident of the town. “Everything was in tatters. We have only lost our car, because we live on the second floor, but we have friends and neighbours who have lost everything,” said Emilio, her husband. “Over time, emotional ties are established with the customers: with the one who comes on Saturdays, the one who comes almost every day…”, acknowledged María José, a worker. “These are feelings of emotion and gratitude,” said the general manager of Carrefour Levante Norte, Alejandro Puig.
The CEO of Carrefour Spain, Elodie Perthuisot, has highlighted that this is the “most modern and innovative” store of the chain in Spain, which has more than two hundred hypermarkets. “Not only have we reopened, but we have actually completely rebuilt the store and we have decided to make it the most modern store here, in Alfafar,” she added about the establishment that employs nearly 300 workers. It was the fourth hypermarket of the multinational that it opened in Spain.
The renovations and repairs have lasted 71 days and 500 people have worked on the works to reactivate a motor of the large commercial area, which was particularly damaged by the floods that spread between Sedaví and Alfafar, towns in l'Horta Sud de Valencia.
Puig recalled that, after the flood, the car park was “totally destroyed” and this was one of the first phases to be tackled. With the reconstruction they have made it “accessible and as comfortable as possible” for customers. It has a structure that allegorically represents the shape of the Valencian sea, with photovoltaic panels that feed the chargers of the electric stations.
“The reconstruction has allowed us to redesign the hypermarket and we have made it a much more personal hypermarket, with much more identified universes and easy identification for our customers, but with the essence of our commercial formula,” he added. The manager has emphasized the new Home Outlet area due to the need of the residents of the area to re-equip their houses, battered after the flood.
The chain's managers have also highlighted the commitment to local products, especially fruit and vegetables from the Valencia area, which is locally sourced. "We work with more than 60 local suppliers," said Puig, adding that they expect to have more than 100,000 customers at Carrefour Alfafar in the first month of opening.
Among the 227 dead from the Dana in the province of Valencia there is no worker from the Alfafar hypermarket, which welcomed almost thirty people on the night of the Dana on its first floor of offices, including customers and workers from the establishment and others in the surrounding area.
The director has assured that he does not know in detail the investment made for the reform. And asked if, among the innovations they have made, they have also taken any measures to prevent future floods, Puig has indicated that the wall that was there is the one that has been practically maintained, “more or less with the same structure because we did not have much time either.”
He added: “We had to get out in record time. The job is not so much the wall, but the store itself, offering the store as soon as possible to our customers with all the commercial models that they have usually enjoyed,” he stressed.
The centre was built almost 50 years ago, in a flood zone, like the rest of the commercial and industrial park, separated from the area of influence of the Albufera by a motorway.
EL PAÍS
