He Forata Reservoir It was built in 1969 to regulate the flow of the Magro River, a tributary of the Júcar on its left bank closest to the city of Valencia, at the epicenter of the floods caused by DANA last Tuesday October 29, very close to the place where it was built. is located. Poyo Ravine. That day, it rained heavily throughout the morning, so that flows increased to more than 200 cubic meters per second by midday, prompting the first flood warnings. But at that time the rains subsided and the flows were reduced at the beginning of the afternoon, until the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ), dependent on the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, by Teresa Ribera, detects that the dam of the Forata reservoir was in danger of breaking and began to spill.
Between the dam and the flooded areas there are more than 50 kilometers and whatever the speed at which the water circulates during a flood, carrying everything in its path, it would have been time to warn the people concerned, at least a few hours before being swept away by the current. And then why wasn’t one sent? alert cell phones of Valencians before 8:11 p.m., when many of them were already up to their necks in water? We can analyze the sequence of events and the communications made public to find an explanation that is more logical than emotional.
On October 29 at 5 p.m., the Generalitat convened a meeting of the Integrated operational coordination center (CECOPI) in which representatives of all the institutions concerned participated, including the Government delegate, Pilar Bernabé. The same person who gave a press conference at noon, to report that the red alert for heavy rain lasted until 6:00 p.m., so it was expected that in the afternoon the weather would improve and that It stops raining so intensely. During this CECOPI meeting, no one warned of a risk of rupture of the Forata dam.
Before this CECOPI meeting, at 4:13 p.m., the CHJ sent an email to room 112 informing it that the flow in Rambla de Poyo was 28.7 cubic meters per second “with a downward trend”, according to the flow measured 23 minutes previously, at 3:50 p.m. In the following two and a half hours, the Jucar Confederation It has not yet issued an alert on this boulevard, identified as one of the main causes of the tragedy, but it has sent other warnings, adding a total of 130 emails sent between Monday and Tuesday; It was only at 6:43 p.m. that one of these 130 emails warned that the flow had already reached “1,686 m³/s with an upward trend”, the Forata dam was already overflowing.
It was only at 8 p.m. that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morancontacted by telephone with the emergency advisor of the Valencian Government, Salome Pradasto inform him of what was happening at the Forata dam; and 10 minutes later, the alerts were on the cell phones of Valencians, as well as the Ministry of Therese Ribera The Generalitat was informed that the dam could break at any time.
It is true that on the CHJ site, there is an Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH) where flow rates can be checked in real time from nearly 200 data collection points updated every 5 minutes. But that doesn’t explain why there were two and a half hours of vacuum between 4:13 p.m. and the sending of an email to 112 warning that the flow rate was 28.7 m³/s with a downward trend; and at 6:43 p.m. when it was warned that the said flow had already reached 1,686 m³/s with an upward trend, nor that the Forata dam was failing its reservoir due to the risk of rupture.
Over the last 50 years, Spain has become the country of a thousand administrations. Political parties compete with each other to manage the central government, autonomous communities, municipal councils, provincial councils and hundreds of other public bodies. All important events can have electoral significance and civil servants who plan to make a career in administration know this, which is why none of them dares to make a transcendental decision without consulting it with the politician whose depends.
Likewise, no second-level politician will act in these cases without first informing his political superior. Only a psychopath incapable of caring about anything other than what happens to him would be able to condition financial aid to those affected by DANA on the opposition’s approval of the budgets he needs to exhaust Parliament. Only a psychopath would be capable of delaying the warnings so that the Valencians die drowned in the mud which, for several days, has covered all the cases of corruption which affect “The 1”. Only a psychopath would be capable of that!
