Bonaire Shopping Center: colossal challenge for its reopening

Already out of the initial media focus due to the possibility that hundreds of those disappeared by the DANA and once it was verified that it did not house any deceased, the Bonaire shopping centerone one of the largest in Valenciafaces the colossal task towards its reopening.

This giant of shopping, leisure and gastronomy in AldaiaValencia, which last year alone exceeded eleven and a half million visitors, should receive thousands of them this weekend, if it were not for the fact that the great flood of last October 29 left its galleries and shops in a kind of apocalyptic scenario.

Although without customers, the shopping center does continue with a certain amount of traffic, about a hundreds of workers who work, in some cases assisted by machinery, in the recovery of the 135,000 square meters of leasable area.

They are underground garagewith 1,800 places, was completely flooded and the water reached the commercial ground floor of the complex, where tasks focus on draining water, removing and cleaning debris and mud, and analyzing and evaluating the facilities.

The intention of its owners is to be able to resume activity “as soon as possible”, although it is not yet possible to specify an approximate reopening date until this phase of analysis and evaluation is completed, as sources from the Unibail group have informed EFE. Rodamco-Westfield to which it belongs.

Some of the near 2,700 people working in Bonaire -including employees of retailers and tenants, management and services-, consulted by EFE during a visit inside the center, will hardly be able to forget the afternoon and night of the devastating damage, when water began to fill the center.

“It was a dull afternoon, there were not many people here, but we never imagined what was to come,” one of these employees tells EFE, who prefers not to reveal his name or have it published which well-known franchise he works for.

Both he and his companions, dressed in wellies and masks, work hard. remove the mud still present about three weeks later, in cleaning shelves and trying to recover all the material that can be saved against the clock, before the mold that is already present on many walls spreads.

“We don’t want to think what would have happened if this had happened on a Saturday, when the influx is massive,” says the manager of one of the more than 120 stores, one of the few in her company that has been ‘saved’ from the ERTE in which her colleagues will be there until the center can reopen to the public.

Both agree in emphasizing that, despite the fears and initial confusion, miraculously there are no personal victims to be regretted in this great malldespite the fact that it was initially feared that its underground parking – which was completely covered in water – could have become a death trap.

The management points out to EFE that, thanks to the warning generated by the center’s own detection systems, the action and evacuation protocol in the event of emergencies, even fifteen minutes before the general alert was received by the rest of the population.

The security team worked quickly, according to the crisis management plan, for the evacuation, including the parking lots, and directed people in the shopping complex towards higher safe zones and out of danger, like one of the cinemas which sheltered those trapped for many hours.

Among the operators and workers of the franchises, many of them with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the presence of security guards and even police officers is also notable, who provide security to facilities that, hours after DANA, They were subject to some looting and vandalism.

Along with containers, garbage bags and strong smells, especially at the entrances to the underground parking lot and the hypermarket, mannequins stripped of their clothes seem to be waiting in this center for the return of commercial activity and clientele, a movement that the Dana paralyzed that fateful afternoon. and that some optimists wish it could bring back Christmas. There remains a lot of work and waiting.