“We are covered in mud, you have blood on your hands. » Behind this sign and others just as severe, nearly 130,000 people gathered in Valencia on the evening of Saturday, November 9, according to the prefecture, to demand the resignation of the president of the autonomous region, the conservative Carlos Mazon, in due to its failed management of the floods which left 117 dead and 78 missing in the province on October 29.
« Assassin », shouted demonstrators although the instructions were to meet for a silent march. “ Where were you? “, they asked, in reference to the latest revelations about the absence of Mr. Mazon throughout the afternoon of October 29. Between 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., he was at a “professional lunch” with a local journalist, while the floods devastated many communities. “The Valencian people were abandoned to their fate for five days”concluded the final manifesto.
The more the days pass, the more the revelations about the hours that preceded “the floods of the century” on October 29 are overwhelming for the government responsible for disaster management, alerting the population and activating relief services. Visibly overwhelmed by events, unaware of the seriousness of the extreme weather phenomenon that was hitting the region, the conservative Valencian government downplayed the warnings of the Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which had declared the red alert at 7:36 a.m. on the morning of October 29.
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He also ignored the seriousness of the information transmitted by the Hydrographic Confederation of Jucar, from 11 a.m., to the emergency services of Valencia, concerning the flow of the Magre river and the Poyo, the watercourse which devastated Chiva in mid- day then, in the evening, Paiporta, Catarroja and the other towns of the southern suburbs of Valencia.
Severity of the situation
Ten days after the tragedy, it appears that throughout the day the Spanish government, led by socialist Pedro Sanchez, tried to alert regional authorities of the importance of action. The delegate of the central government, Pilar Barnabé, the equivalent of the prefect in France, convened, from 9 a.m., a meeting with the Military Emergency Unit (UME), the Civil Guard, Aemet and the emergency services Valencian.
She also called three times, between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., the regional minister of the interior and justice, Salomé Pradas, to make available all the state's resources in order to deal with the torrential rains and floods which then occurred in Utiel and threatened the entire province of Valencia. Mme Pradas only finally declared level 2 of the emergency plan around 3 p.m. and then called on the UME only for the Utiel area.
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