Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, this morning ruled out that the Government would take over the tasks of coordinating the disaster caused by DANA in the Valencian Community. “Together, hand in hand, we work better”.
“We are a decentralized country and at the moment the only thing the Spanish government is thinking about is collaboration. The only thing we did was to incorporate the Minister of the Interior (Fernando Grande Marlaska) and the Minister of Territorial Policy (Ángel Víctor Torres) in coordination with the Generalitat Valenciana”, he indicated.
“We work on a piece rate basis. I hardly slept, I didn’t sleep the night before. We all give 100% of what we are capable of,” assured the minister in statements to National Radio.
Asked about the state of road and rail traffic, Puente stressed that “Only the national road network shows damage over 80 kilometers of its route”.
“In the case of the A-7, there is a section in which a viaduct has collapsed and it is impossible to travel on it. We are going to provide a temporary solution with a few boxes which will form a sort of bypass so that you can drive at 40 kilometers per hour,” he said.
“We are trying to restore the roads urgently”Puente insisted. “We destroyed the A-3. It’s true that it is open, but only in case of emergency and you have to do a gymkhana to travel on it. On the other hand, we have the V-30 and the V- 31 in which there are many accumulated vehicles.
“In the case of the railway, we have the high speed cut, but this is the least worrying situation because no significant damage has occurred. We will concentrate on repairing the track of the tunnel of Chiva and I hope it will be solved in 15 days “The most serious problem is in the Cercanías. Three of the five suburban lines that Valencia owns have disappeared. There we are going to have to make a very big effort.”
Given the scale of the disaster, the Minister of Transport assured that the Government “will take decisions in agreement with the competent authority to manage this crisis”, referring to the moment when the roads or railways will be opened.
“The situation is extremely serious. There are many places that are inaccessible with any type of vehicle.. We put the means at our disposal at the service of the Valencian Generalitat, which is the one that coordinates the entire emergency,” he concluded.
