2 Young Brothers Still Missing 11 Days After Spanish Floods Pulled Them from Father’s Arms: ‘They Were Such Happy Kids’

A family in Valencia, Spain, is continuing the desperate search for two young boys after flood waters ripped them from their father’s grasp over a week ago.

With his wife working the late shift, Victor Matías returned home on Oct. 29 after picking up his two sons, Rubén, 3, and Izan, 5, from daycare and was preparing to make them dinner when the house was overtaken by flood waters, according to the BBC.

As the flooding became more severe, Victor sat the tearful boys down in their bedroom and attempted to reassure them, The Times reported. Just a few moments later, water — and a truck it was carrying — smashed through a wall and carried the trio from their home and to a nearby ravine.

“Everything that was forced down the ravine — cars, trees and a container — hit the bedroom outer wall with a great crash,” the boys’ aunt, Barbara Sastre, told The Times.

Victor grabbed his sons in his arms as the water swept them away, his next-door neighbor Jonathan Perez told the BBC. But despite his best efforts, the boys were swept away in the floods — and so was Victor.

“Victor regained his footing and carried the boys in his arms. But then he realised he no longer had them,” Perez said. “The water took everything in its path.”

According to Victor’s mother, he almost gave in to the flood waters after his sons were swept away, but kept going because he could not leave his wife by herself, the BBC reported.

The father of two was found four hours later, clinging to a tree a few hundred feet from the home. After more than a week of intensive daily searches, Rubén and Izan are still missing.

The boys — who are not the only people missing following the catastrophic flooding — have since made headlines as “los niños desaparecidos,” or “the missing children,” as the search for them continues, the BBC reported.

The brothers’ family is “destroyed” by their absence, their aunt said — a sentiment evidenced by Victor sleeping with the boys’ blankets as he recovered from his flood injuries, according to the BBC.

“We are destroyed,” Sastre told The Times. “They are so young and so many days have now passed.”

Sastre also described the young boys as cartoon-loving, high-energy children full of joy. “They were such happy kids,” Sastre told the BBC.

Their neighbor, Perez, echoed this sentiment — and expressed anger at the timing of the official flooding alert, which he thinks came too late.

“They were loving life and they hadn’t even started being people — they were 3 and 5 years old,” he said of the little boys.

“With better coordination, better management and an earlier alarm — even half an hour earlier — those kids could have been saved,” he added, “and those parents would not be going through hell.”

Izan and Rubén are among the 89 people who are still unaccounted for after the deadly flooding as of Tuesday, Nov. 5, according to the Associated Press and The Times. At least 217 people, meanwhile, are confirmed to have been killed.