The massive alert asking the population not to leave their homes on the afternoon of October 29 could have been launched at least two hours earlier. As elDiario.es was able to confirm, the company that manages 112 was informed shortly after 6 p.m. that an alarm was going to be sent to all cell phones. This warning was not sent, however, due to the doubts of the Minister of Justice and responsible for coordinating emergencies, Salomé Pradas, and due to the absence of the President of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, who is not arrived only after 7:30 p.m. meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi). The alert was issued at 8:11 p.m., when hundreds of people were already trapped.
President Carlos Mazón was neither there nor expected. The harshest and most terrifying DANA of the 21st century was hitting Valencia and its top politician went from event to event and shared a hearty meal with a journalist to talk, not about the storm, but about the maneuvers aimed at changing the orientation of public television without competition. . At the head of a crisis of unprecedented scale was Minister Pradas. It was she, and not Mazón, who was still explaining the situation at 7:45 p.m., who decided that the mass alert would be launched at 8:11 p.m. to warn the population not to travel. The warning came late, with the Poyo Ravine and the Magro River overflowing for hours, sweeping away lives, vehicles and homes.
Could the mass alert have been launched earlier and with a stronger message? Yes, as elDiario.es was able to confirm from sources at Ilunion IT Services, the company that manages the emergency call system, at 6:10 p.m. the operations manager 112 was already informed that an alert was going to be sent . .to all cell phones because of the storm. He was also informed that citizens would be asked to follow the instructions that would be given by In PuntValencian public television.
This opinion, however, remained in force to wait for for more than two hours and was only sent at 8:11 p.m., when Minister Salomé Pradas decided to launch it and after a fierce debate between technicians on the content of the message to send, as confirmed by elDiario.es from the technical service sources and emergency policies of the Generalitat, the Provincial Delegation of Valencia and the institutions dependent on the Spanish Government.
Contacted by this newspaper, the Ministry of Justice and the Interior did not wish to make any comment. Questioned by this newspaper, the Ilunion company did not offer any official version concerning this information.
On October 29 at 6 p.m., during the Cecopi meeting at the L’Eliana Emergency Coordination Center, they were already informed that the Poyo ravine was carrying 1,725 cubic meters of water per second, almost four times the flow of the river. Ebro – and that the Forata dam had started to overflow due to the risk of overflowing. Information obtained by elDiario.es indicates that the decision not to send the alert at 6:00 p.m. was political and not technical, since the company that manages the emergency services was informed that this notice was going to be sent when it It was barely ten o’clock. minutes before six o’clock in the afternoon.
Sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition also confirmed to this editorial staff that, around 6 p.m., the president of the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ), Miguel Polo, had put on the table the possibility of sending “massive alerts to the entire population.” via the Es-alert system on all cell phones in the province of Valencia.
Emergency sources consulted by this newspaper explain that, around 7:00 p.m. and after several breaks in Cecopi with the municipal councilor coming and going, Pradas informed the meeting participants that the mass alert would be sent, although shortly after 6:00 p.m. . the subcontractor had been informed of its shipment. “It takes a long time to send the Es-alert message because they argue over how to write it,” laments a source present at Cecopi.
The advisor, these sources say, directly separated her team during the meeting and began questioning the technicians, who were very hesitant. “She consults, among others, the fire chief and the deputy emergency director, who do not agree,” he adds. At that time, according to another source present at the message negotiations, there were still those who insisted on sending an alert that was not “excessively alarming.”
Discussion on how to write the alert
During this hour, the advisor constantly asked “what are we doing, what are we doing”, entered and left the meeting to speak with President Mazón, but did not report the content of the conversation, highlights this Emergency source. “And he insists on the fact that the CHJ gives contradictory information, that the representative says all the time that he does not know what will happen,” he adds. After a long debate, in a tense context, one of the representatives blurted out: “Let this fucking message get across!” » and “it is not necessary to write a text for the teachers”, expressions which show the tension of the meeting.
Finally, and after a fierce debate, the wording intended to send the message to the population ended with a short and not very alarmist text: “Civil Protection alert due to heavy rains and as a preventive measure, all types of travel must be avoided in the province of Valencia. Stay tuned for future reviews via this channel and official sources, on X @GVA112 and on À Punt. In the municipalities of the Ribera region, some town halls had published messages and statements a few hours earlier in which they asked their neighbors to go up to the first floor of their buildings.
After 7:30 p.m. and with the decision already made to launch the message, the president of the Generalitat arrived in Cecopi. Various sources present at the meeting of the emergency coordination body explained that when Mazón arrived, they had to explain everything to him again. About half an hour after his arrival, “Emergencias 112 Comunitat Valenciana” finally sent the automatic alert to the cell phones of all citizens of the province of Valencia. It was already late: many of the towns were completely flooded and their neighbors were struggling to survive.
The information published by elDiario.es also shows that the Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, not only discussed at 7:15 p.m. the operation of these alerts, as reported by Cadena SER, but that an hour before, at 6:10 p.m. , the company which manages emergencies in Valencia had already been informed that this measure was going to be taken, even if in the end the step was not taken. Pradas initially lied by saying that it was only after 8 p.m. that he learned that this alert system existed on cell phones, when a technician informed him about it.
The Cecopi meeting began on October 29 at 5:00 p.m. and at 5:35 p.m. the hydrological alert for the Magro and Júcar rivers from the confluence with Algemesí was already on the table. At 5:40 p.m., the advisor interrupted the session for half an hour to take some time to think.
At 5:59 p.m., the CHJ reported that the Forata reservoir had opened the floodgates and at 6:00 p.m. that the Poyo ravine was transporting 1,725 cubic meters of water per second. It was at the resumption of the meeting that Polo himself reported these data and, given the current situation, suggested the possibility of launching the mass alert. Ten minutes later, the emergency services were informed that the alarm was going to be sent.
At 6:00 p.m., 2,000 calls come into 112 with a wait of 4 minutes
After 6 p.m., calls for help also began to pile up. From early morning, 112 sources explained to this newspaper that they had received a very high volume of calls which increased as the day progressed.
At 6:14 p.m., the wait time for emergency calls was four minutes. During the current hour, more than 2,000 calls were received, which only thirty employees had to handle. The rush was such that the afternoon staff was augmented by assigning overtime or recruiting employees who were scheduled to work that day. Even if the 112 sources consulted describe it as “usual” for staff to be reinforced when a difficult day is anticipated, they admit to having never experienced a situation as upsetting as that of October 29.
At 8:38 p.m., when many affected towns were already completely flooded, the waiting time at 112 was more than nine minutes and almost a hundred calls were waiting. There were so many calls for help that 112 collapsed and many victims ended up calling the Civil Guard and other state security forces and agencies only to lose aid and relief.
