CHIVA, Spain –
Mud cakes her boots, splatters her leggings and the gloves holding her broom. Brown specks freckle her cheeks.
The mire covering Alicia Montero is the signature uniform of the impromptu army of volunteers who for a third day Friday shoveled and swept out the muck and debris that filled the small town of Chiva in Valencia after flash floods swept through the region. Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory has left at least 205 people dead with untold numbers still missing, and countless lives in tatters.
As police and emergency workers continue the grim search for bodies, authorities appear overwhelmed by the enormity of the disaster, and survivors are relying on the esprit de corps of volunteers who have rushed in to fill the void.
While hundreds of people in cars and on foot have been streaming in from Valencia city to the suburbs to help, Montero and her …