The best of being human

I’m not asking how you are because I can imagine it. I am also horrified by the death toll which continues to rise. Excited, by the solidarity of thousands of people trying to help. Sorry, because an advanced country like ours suffered a tragedy of such magnitude.

“You never think that these disasters that you see on television could affect your loved ones,” writes María Rozalén, back in Letur, the town of Albacete where she spent her childhood and where several missing people are still being searched for . In Letur and in dozens of other municipalities, notably in Valencia. The death toll from DANA already exceeds 200 people. A terrible figure that increases every day. Mothers. Parents. Children. Friends. Neighbors. The human being is defined as follows: by the links that unite us to others. This is why every unjust death is like an amputation; something that leaves us all with a huge scar.

I see these thousands of people, armed with buckets, shovels and brooms, volunteering on foot to the most affected areas, and I am proud of our society. Of the human being, who has no other virtue greater than empathy; the one who unites us with others. These people are my home. And so are these victims.

Every time I have to cover a tragedy like this as a journalist, the same thing happens to me. Firstly, it is the informational tension that prevails: the adrenaline of current events. You concentrate on your work, which is rarely more useful than in these moments; trying to do it well. You spend several days counting the dead, without being fully aware of what each life lost means. And there always comes a moment, two or three days later, when all that information you have accumulated to be able to inform others overwhelms you. It’s beyond you. This happened to me three days after 11 a.m., for example. Or during the pandemic. This still happens to me today, as I write this letter to you. I can’t stop crying.

I also feel anger and indignation towards those who try to take advantage of this tragedy for the most petty and base political use. Clean hands, for example; On Thursday, he filed a complaint in court against AEMET officials, whom he accuses of hundreds of reckless homicides. While DANA is still active and half of Spain is expecting torrential rains, this far-right organization has found nothing better than to destabilize the state meteorological agency. An institution that we cannot blame for anything: of all the organizations involved in what happened, AEMET is undoubtedly the one that functioned the best.

Attacking meteorologists, questioning their work, puts us all in danger. This is what scientists say, who warn of the enormous risk of undermining their credibility.

This is why what Alberto Núñez Feijóo did, one of the most despicable political gestures in memory, is also indecent. The opposition leader joins in these criticisms of AEMET because it is his way of reproaching the Government for management that was not his. This is not even the first time in his political career that Feijóo has attempted to exploit the deaths of innocent people in his favor.

Equally unpresentable is what Santiago Abascal did: accusing the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, of the disaster for the “criminal destruction of dams”. This is a pure hoax that the far right has been spreading for a long time. At Vox, they don’t seem to understand the difference between a real reservoir and a one or two meter dam – like the ones that were removed because they were decommissioned, but which are useless against flooding. There is no large dam in the entire Valencian Community that has been eliminated. But these ultras don’t care about the truth.

DANA is still active, there are still too many people missing, there are much bigger problems to solve. But a day will come when it will be obligatory to do an autopsy on this tragedy. Do not blame the dead: because I am very clear that none of the public representatives who managed this crisis wanted there to be a single victim. It will be essential to analyze what happened because it is the only way to learn, so that it never happens to us again.

There are several obvious questions on the table that, sooner or later, someone will have to answer. Especially by the Valencian Generalitat, which is the one that manages the civil protection powers.

Most importantly: why did it take so many hours to warn the population not to travel on the roads?

The AEMET red alert for the Valencian Community – maximum danger level, there is no higher level – was on the table since 7:36 a.m. Tuesday morning. Shortly after, at 8:04 a.m., AEMET again warned that “the danger is extreme” and asked citizens “to only travel if strictly necessary”.

This is a warning that the Valencian Generalitat only conveyed to citizens with the most powerful tool we have today – the mobile alert system – more than twelve hours later: Tuesday at 8:12 p.m. . For hundreds of people, this phone message reached them when they were already stuck in their cars, many of them with water up to their necks.

It is scandalous to recall the ridicule and criticism with which some right-wing politicians have greeted this mobile alert system, which serves to save lives. The administration sending this alarm does not know the numbers or any type of private data: only that you are connected to one of the cell towers in that region. So there is no risk to privacy or intimacy.

In September 2023, the Community of Madrid launched these alarm messages, with the arrival of a powerful storm. The rains were indeed very heavy, although no deaths were reported. Despite this, the criticism was enormous. There was even a senior official from the Community of Madrid who explained in detail how to uninstall these alerts from your phone, thus encouraging people to do so. None of those who then irresponsibly criticized this alarm system wanted to admit their mistake.

Another question, also topical: why did the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, assure on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. that the intensity of the storm would decrease at 6:00 p.m.? This was an erroneous forecast, which does not agree with AEMET information.

The agency said something else, very different: that the red alert was for now until 6 p.m., but that it could continue after that. A completely different message from that conveyed by Mazón.

The president of the Generalitat Valenciana also released the video with this appearance on social networks. The same day, at dawn, he deleted the tweet.

But the problem lies not only in the timely management of this crisis: in what could have been done and what was not done this week.

Scientists remain cautious about associating this sudden cold drop with the climate crisis. It is still early to draw this conclusion, even if the correlation between the increase in temperatures in the Mediterranean and this type of phenomena, which will be more frequent, which will be more brutal, is very obvious.

A year ago on elDiario.es we published one of our specials on data journalism. The title was “Spain prone to flooding: more than a million homes are built in risk areas”. Pau Rodríguez, Victòria Oliveres and Raúl Sánchez cross-referenced the cadastre data with the national flood zone mapping system. They were able to see, street by street, all the buildings built in Spain in flood zones. This is the result of years and years of urban planning that ignored the most fundamental thing: there is land that should not be built on. You can check for yourself if your home is in one of these areas.

This week we re-examined this data. And the maps match what we have just experienced. 5% of housing in Valencia is built in areas prone to flooding. Spain’s Mediterranean coast is home to irresponsible urban planning. It can cost lives.

I say goodbye to you for today, with the hope that the final death toll will be lower than what we fear today. Hopefully we will learn our lesson.

A hug,

Ignacio School

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