Katie and I don’t watch television – we haven’t for years.  I can’t see that ever changing, but I was still somehow inexplicably pleased when we arrived in the apartment in Valencia’s old quarter three weeks ago and I saw how good our reception was.  It’s all antennas here and often they don’t work very well – I guess I interpreted it as a good sign that our building had a good one; if that worked, maybe everything else would too.  A quick look up on our roof showed that we had one of the most modern and one of the tallest antennas in the area.

Pride comes before the fall

The average temperature in Valencia for the past few days – day and night – has been 20˚C.  That warmth has been brought to us by a constant wind that has produced some pretty impressive gusts (and a strange whale-song off in the distance that we just can’t figure out…).  We’re on the top two floors of our building and the roof has been taking a battering, I can tell you.

And then the world crashed into our bedroom suddenly at about 4 AM last night.  That’s how it seemed, anyway.  There was a tremendous crash that had us both up and out of bed in an instant, ready for anything.  When I peered out of the window and saw the top section of our building’s antenna hanging there, I knew that I should take some kind of action but drowsiness and a lingering flu compelled me back to bed…

Thankfully, our bedroom has a little balcony, whose railing prevented the antenna from hitting the glass of our windows.  If that had happened, we would have been covered in shards of glass.  That was my last thought as drifted off to sleep.

In the morning I was amazed to see just how much damage had been done.  The antenna had fallen down across our terrace on the top floor, hit the railing where it bent so that the top section slammed into our bedroom balcony railing.  It had taken out several older antennas on the way and various support cables (no that they were much use).  The whole tangled mess teetered on some power lines – not good.

Our building’s massive antenna just couldn’t take the wind.  In a way, it’s good that it was so tall – a few feet shorter and that second section wouldn’t have reached the lower balcony railing and would have showered us with shattered glass while we slept.

Chicago of Spain?

My neighbour assures me that this kind of wind storm is not common here.  Valencia isn’t normally such a windy city.  That’s a relief…

Similar things must have happened all over Valencia – the phone lines to the Fire Department were jammed.  My neighbour had to go and find a Police officer in the street to get him to call for us on the emergency channel.  It took hours for them to come.  They quickly untangled the precarious jumble of cables and twisted metal then, scanning the rooftops for other hazards – there were several –  they took their leave in search of other disasters to avert.  The captain’s understated parting remark charmed me: “Quite a morning.”

So it was.