The province of Valencia, the area hardest hit by the catastrophic cold fall with more than 150 deathsyou will need a strong injection of aid and investment face the reconstruction of a large part of its basic infrastructure and transport networks. After the floods passed last Tuesday Tons of sludge are still accumulating and the toll of material destruction is devastating..
Of the five Cercanías lines that make up the center of Valencia, three “have disappeared” and the service cannot be restored in the coming monthsin the words of the Minister of Transport himself, Óscar Puente. Although he insisted that “sufficient evidence is still lacking to carry out a definitive analysis of the damage”, he summarized the seriousness of what awaits us in the short and medium term, particularly in the metropolitan area of Valenciawhich has more than 1.3 million inhabitants.
quite something More than 80 kilometers of the rail transport network through which the C-1, C-2 and C-3 travel are completely destroyed. “Neither usable nor repairable, so they will have to be completely replaced and that is why circulation will take a long time to recover,” Óscar Puente forcefully declared during his appearance in Madrid to explain the effects of DANA and what causes them. wait. citizens of the third most populous province in Spain.
Neither There are dates for the MetroValencia network to work againwhich, in addition to the problems with its networks, suffered significant damage in its main facilities where it has its own control center located near Paiporta.
Logistics routes and nodes
The damage caused by the tsunami of water and mud did not only affect the railway tracks. The list of seriously affected highways, roads and bridges, established by the ministry, includes: one of the major communication axes of Valencia: the A-7 which connects the entire Mediterranean coast. One of the viaducts of the Valencia ring road, near Quart de Poblet, has collapsed. This way 100,000 vehicles circulate daily and the minister acknowledged that “its replacement will take months”, even if temporary alternatives are being studied.
This black spot of flooding is very close to the connection with the A-3, which connects the center and Madrid at the height of Ribarroja, the major logistics center of the Valencia metropolitan area where nearly 1,400 companies are located. Access to these polygons and their facilities has been severely affected and at least three deaths have been recorded there. This area constitutes a vital logistics hub for Valencia and its neighboring municipalities, with distribution platforms for chains such as Mercadona, Consum or El Corte Inglésin addition to the main node for many operators who use the port of Valencia, the most important in terms of container traffic in Spain.
To the list of state roads and major accesses to Valencia There are dozens of roads that connect the different cities of Valenciawith kilometers of asphalt lifted and bridges collapsed. The most difficult case is that of CV-36, the regional highway which connects Torrent and its 91,000 inhabitants to the capital: five of its viaducts have fallen. The Provincial Deputation of Valencia also announced that it would commit 25 million euros for urgent actions on its roads. Almost half of this amount, 12 millionwill be allocated exclusively to works on seven destroyed or damaged bridges in municipalities like Ribarroja and Cheste.
The President of the Government himself, Pedro Sánchez, who visited the emergency center of Valencia yesterday and met with the Valencian President, Carlos Mazón, announced that he would declare the catastrophic zone in the municipalities affected by DANA to try to accelerate the arrival of funds and actions. The two Valencian employers CEV as CCOO and UGT requested this measure, so that businesses and workers can benefit from force majeure ERTEalthough they also stressed that additional help would be needed
Powers, alerts and aid to the army
The differences between the Generalitat of Carlos Mazón and the central government have once again become evident despite the fact that after the meeting that the PP baron had with Pedro Sánchez, he thanked him for his trip to Valencia and for his collaboration. Before this meeting, the Ministry of the Interior sent a press release in which it recalled “that the management of territorial Civil Protection plans falls under the CCAA”, after the controversy over when the Valencians were alerted and the alarm level was increased.
A few hours after this meeting, Mazón requested help from “available personnel” of the Army distribute aid to disaster victims in villages located south of the Valencian capital, where the lack of supplies in the coming hours could be critical and where many victims had expressed criticism of the lack of foreign aid during the two previous days.
