At the stroke of three in the afternoon this Sunday, a hundred relatives of the people missing in the fire at the Murcia nightclub La Fonda de los Milagros were waiting to find out if their loved ones were among the 13 deaths confirmed up to that moment. . They were waiting for news together at the Palacio de los Deportes in Murcia, just 150 meters from the room where the fire broke out, and surrounded by the team that the Red Cross had sent to the place to treat them.
The psychologist Luis Pérez Molina is part of it, who in conversation with this newspaper, defined the state in which the group found itself at that time as “a certain calm.” «They are eager for information, with the suspense of not knowing if their relative is in one condition or another, waiting to receive more specific news from the authorities. There will be people whose family member has died, but the window is open that they could be in the hospital or even that they had left the premises before the fire and could still be located today,” thus describing the situation of uncertainty they were experiencing.
«It is a moment in which if you hurry me, understand, they are even calm in quotes, because they have already given the pertinent information about each of their relatives and they are waiting to be told something else, in a standby, more calmer than when they suddenly arrive at the place where they have been summoned. The relatives, the expert explained, had spent the morning in tension giving an account of the person they had missing and any physical features, clothing or tattoos that could lead to their recognition.
Pérez Molina is a volunteer psychologist with the Red Cross Emergency Response Group (ERIE), specifically the Psychosocial Intervention subgroup, dedicated to providing psychological first aid and human support to victims of tragedies such as the one that occurred early Sunday morning in Murcia. He belongs to the group of three psychologists, seven accompanying lifeguards, five health emergency technicians, two nurses, a social worker and a member of the Autonomous Operations Center, mobilized after the request of 112 from different parts of the region – he resides in Yecla – around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday.
«Upon arrival we found a group of six families, each of them with a missing person. At that time, psychological care and support was provided to those who needed it most, those who were in a state of greatest concern or anxiety,” he said about the intervention in the first moments. “Throughout the morning many more families have joined until we reach approximately a hundred people,” he added.
In a situation of this type, he specified, his intervention is limited to accompanying them and attending to any type of crisis they may have: “Anxiety, stress… We try to help them to achieve self-control, to regulate their breathing, to provide them with tranquillity. We try to use the group itself, the neighbors, friends and family members who accompany them, we try to get them to respond to the closest support they need and, when that occurs, we take a step back because we know that this support is the best help we can get. they may have,” says Luis Pérez Molina, who has been working as a volunteer for two decades and has provided care for refugees who arrive by boat, those affected by the La Palma volcano, relatives of traffic accident victims or people who have been committed suicide
They also accompany people who have to recognize the corpse of a loved one, as, unfortunately, will happen in this case. «We attend to the immediate response that the body has at a physiological level when a shock of this type occurs, we begin to work with what would be the beginning of a possible grief and possibly tomorrow they will also require our resources to accompany those who have to go do a recognition,” explains the psychologist.
In covering this emergency due to the fire that started in the La Fonda room, they will take over in shifts – “other colleagues will come in the afternoon and at night” so as to never leave the families alone. Your attention could last until the time of the funeral. «Our intervention is immediate. If the person subsequently needs more psychological help, we refer them to the relevant services.
