No one was in control of the emergency system when the flood arrived
Mazón was “absent” at crucial times and the advisor was unable to make decisions
Without a presumption of reliability, life in modern societies would collapse. I am referring to trust in what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls “expert systems”, those organizations structured by the intensive use of computer media whose efficiency and risk reduction we take for granted. A hospital, an airline, a railway company, a bank, public administration or emergency prevention and response devices are some of these systems whose reliability, explains Giddens, “takes the form of anonymous commitments on which trust in knowledge management of which a layman is largely ignorant.
We board a plane, travel by train or subway, undergo surgeries and treatments, even if we don’t know the pilot, driver or surgeon, because we trust expert systems to work. It was therefore not an exaggeration to expect that the Valencian emergency system, equipped with the knowledge, legislation and IT and communications means to monitor weather episodes in real time, would respond diligently to a DANA like the one from last October. . efficiency. But there was no one in charge of the Valencian emergency system.
In recent days, as affected populations recovered from the disaster and deaths continued, we have been able to piece together what happened to cause this emergency system to fail so miserably and with such devastating effects. mortals. And we discovered that there was a tragic distraction at the top of the mechanism. The hours passed between the moment the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, left Palau on October 29 for a “working” meal and his arrival at the meeting of the Integrated Center for Operational Coordination (Cecopi) at the The exterior of I played the head of the structure when his presence was most crucial. A politician who takes refuge, in difficult times, in a small circle of regional secretaries of the Presidency, a sort of “politburo” made up of the essential members of the Alicante group which accompanies him.
with the president outthe only person responsible for the operation, the Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, kept the Cecopi meeting going for hours without doing anything, waiting for the head of the Consell to make a decision. Neither does the regional secretary of Security and Emergencies, Emilio Argüeso. It was as if in the cockpit of a commercial flight the pilot was ill without anyone taking care of the instruments, or as if in an operating room a seriously ill patient had a cardiac arrest while waiting for the surgeon without anyone health personnel take the slightest initiative. . And, as we later learned, the emergency management structure was half-jointed.
We are living in sad days, where the information we offer describes an intolerable situation of dysfunction of an expert system whose mission was to be able, at any time, to reduce the brutal impact of the floods and to quickly launch the response to its effects. The PP attempts to confront this evidence with an argument which, among other things, seeks to minimize the massive sending of SMS alerts to all citizens, this alert arriving so late and according to which Minister Pradas alleged that he was had explained that it could be used a few minutes before its broadcast. It will be difficult to camouflage the formidable fiasco of emergency management which failed when it was supposed to function, with the disproportionate toll of destruction and victims that this DANA has caused on Valencian lands.
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