The autonomous executive of Carlos Mazón took only four months to get rid of the Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE), an organization inherited from the previous Pact del Botànic government and responsible for guaranteeing rapid intervention throughout the territory in the event of an emergency of meteorological or seismic origin, extinction of forest fires and tsunamis.
It was an organization – a sort of autonomous version of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) – designed to guarantee rapid intervention in emergencies and created by the previous Consell of socialist Ximo Puig in February 2023 However, the Mazón government, then formed by the PP and Vox, urgently repealed the decree that regulated the creation of the Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE).
This is the “first Ximo Puig organization deleted by Carlos Mazón”, according to what the Valencian PP declared in a tweet that many users of the social network X retrieved on Tuesday, after the DANA flood disaster.
The contested action of the regional government in the face of the floods suffered this Tuesday in dozens of Valencian towns, notably in the regions of Utiel-Requena, La Ribera and l’Horta Sud, has revived criticism of Mazón for his decision to eliminate the UVE in its embryonic phase.
Announcing its abolition in November 2023, the Minister of Justice at the time, Elisa Núñez, described the UVE as an “event”. For her part, the spokesperson for the Consell, Ruth Merino, framed the decision within Carlos Mazón’s project aimed at “optimizing all organizations and entities in the public sector so that management is effective.”
The unit depended, in the initial design of the Executive of the PSPV-PSOE, Compromís et Unides Podem, on the Valencian Security and Emergency Response Agency. Mazón, for his part, described the UVE as a “chiringuito” that pitted “firefighters against each other” and did not provide them with equipment.
“The UVE is a project that adds more complexity to emergency management in the Valencian Community, a new idea to fill huge gaps in this management and which punished a sector tired of bad decisions”, said the head of Department of Justice and Interior, Elisa Núñez, when the Consell de Mazón eliminated the entity.
The UVE has plunged itself “into disaster”, according to Vox
Núñez argued that the management of emergencies in the Valencian Community was not solved by “the creation of this unit, but by redefining the model of prevention, extinction and rescue”, improving coordination and posing “the foundations of a better future”.
“The UVE,” criticized the Vox advisor at the time, “was created without the necessary help and reflection on a structural issue and an essential public service like this and, therefore, it does not did not help to redefine this model, but rather to make it worse and complicate things even more and that only meant plunging into lack of coordination and disaster.
The spokesperson for the Consell and Minister of Finance, Economy and Public Administration, Ruth Merino, affirmed that “there are more appropriate formulas to guarantee the coordination of emergencies”.
Mazón defends the decision to eliminate the UVE
The Generalitat assured this Wednesday that the UVE “was just another fictitious organization with zero additional firefighters, zero additional material resources and zero efficiency” and defended that “in no case has it improved or expanded the emergency services”. “I only created positions to pay people placed at random,” he maintained.
Sources from the Presidency of the Generalitat cited by Europa Press came forward after the criticism of PSOE deputies towards “president” Carlos Mazón, whom they accused of having suppressed this unit as soon as he came to power, coinciding with the DANA which is affecting the Valencian these days. Community.
These sources specified that the coordination of powers “is already assumed by the 112”, so they cannot “invade the powers of the State or create an army”, because for this “we have the UME at the level of the ‘State “. Thus, they maintain that the SVU “only created middle management, it did not put firefighters on the road” and they emphasize that this unit “never existed, it was never nothing” . “It was an executive order without any support. There weren’t even any offices. “It was a ghost agency,” they add.
Faced with this situation, they affirmed that the current Consell led by Carlos Mazón “has strengthened the forest fire service, is committed to strengthening and modernizing its material resources and has strengthened collaboration with the firefighters of the provincial councils and the State Security Forces and Corps”.
In addition, they highlighted that the platform of firefighters of the Valencian Community, in which “all unions are represented”, expressed “its rejection of the project” and justified it by affirming that, according to them, the UVE represented “an increase in unnecessary expenses, since the functions they want to entrust to it are already carried out by the firefighters of the provincial consortiums and the town halls of the capitals. They also denounced that this would lead to “an increase in the lack of coordination between services due to duplication created without any technical or operational necessity”.
