Deadly floods in Spain: why was the alert issued to the population so late?

Deadly floods in Spain: why was the alert issued to the population so late?
Deadly floods in Spain: why was the alert issued to the population so late?

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Could the toll from the floods in the south-east of Spain have been less heavy? This is the question asked of local and national authorities, who are criticized for having issued the alert too late.

Spain has not experienced such a deadly natural disaster for 51 years. As the human toll from flooding in the southeast continues to rise, many are wondering about a possible delay by the authorities in warning the population of the danger.

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The weather alert launched in the morning

As it usually does when there is a risk of this kind, the National Meteorological Agency (Aemet) issued on Tuesday morning – at 7:31 a.m. – a “red alert” for the Valencia region in which the warning was unequivocally: “Great caution! The danger is extreme.”

The situation then gradually deteriorated during the day. However, it was not until around 5 p.m. that the regional body responsible for coordinating the action of relief organizations in the event of an emergency, the Cecopi (Integrated Operational Coordination Center), was set up in Valencia.

The late alert from Civil Protection

It was only after 8 p.m. that the alert message was sent by the Civil Protection service to the residents of Valencia. A message accompanied by a shrill sound on their mobile phones, via the Es-alert system, asking them not to leave their homes: “Avoid any type of travel in the Valencia region!”.

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According to the daily The Countryin the case of certain localities among the most devastated by the waters, the message was even sent after 9 p.m. By then, it was already too late. These few lost hours were crucial because thousands of people remained at their workplaces or left their homes in the afternoon, then finding themselves stranded on the roads at the mercy of the raging floods.

The failure of the alert system

“It's appalling to see so many people dying in floods in Europe, when once again meteorologists had predicted extreme rainfall and issued warnings,” said Hannah Cloke, who teaches hydrology at the University of Reading (UK).

“The fact that people are dying in their cars and being swept into streets is entirely preventable if people can be kept away” from flooding, she continued. “This suggests that the system for alerting people […] failed, with deadly consequences,” she concluded about the tragedy in Valencia.

Local authorities singled out?

The Country notes that there has been a double underestimation of the risks run by the national and local authorities. Neither the government nor the president of the autonomous community of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, raised the emergency to level 3, the maximum planned. If this had been done, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, could have taken command of the entire civil protection system.

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Several sources indicate to our colleagues that it was the “generalitat”, the local executive, which alone took the decision not to send alerts to the population before 8 p.m., when many torrents had overflowed and many many towns were already flooded.

Those responsible kick in touch

In fact, the delay in sending the alert message to the population was the center of many questions. The question was also asked by the press to the Minister of Territorial Policy, the socialist Ángel Víctor Torres.

Could this delay in disseminating the alert to the population have influenced such a high number of victims? Victor Torres did not directly answer this explosive question, contenting himself with recalling the time of the Aemet alert and that of the sending of the SMS from Civil Protection.

The president of the regional government, Carlos Mazón, who is the first concerned, had not clarified this point on Wednesday evening.

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