The Minister of Justice of the Valencian Community and Emergency manager, Salomé Pradaslearned of the severity of DANA at 7:15 p.m. last Tuesday, an hour before the alerts were sent (8:16 p.m.). This was stated by ‘Cadena Ser’, affirming that Pradas was informed of this during a meeting with the government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, and a technician.
During this conversation, in addition to discussing the danger due to the level of precipitation brought by this DANA, they evaluated the possibility of sending an alert to cell phones informing them of the danger of flooding in the province of Valencia. Exactly one massive mobile alert system that Pradas discovered its existence the same afternoon on October 29.
In a statement to À Punt, Pradas said that at 8 p.m. in the afternoon he received “a call from the Minister of State for Ecological Transition.” [Teresa] Ribera.” “That’s when he tells me that he is in Colombia, that he discovers the situation, and he tells me that he cannot guarantee that don’t break the dam [de Forata]”, and there, he continues, a technician informs him of this alert system.
Subsequently, he assured that “it is at that moment that a technician informs them [de] which exists a mechanism called ES-Alert, which is not regulated at the moment“. The councilor said that they told her that this was not in their “autonomous plans, which are still a project that is being approved at the Civil Protection Committee”.
Pradas then tried to deny that she was unaware of the alert system, saying that “the Es-Alert system is an interim protocol, which is not regulated, and even so, it is used – with the agreement of CECOPI – for the It is the first time in the history of the Valencian Community that the Executive, through the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, recognizes in a telephone call that there is an imminent risk failure of the Forata dam.
And he assured that “Of course, he knew of the existence of the system for sending mass alert messages to the population in the event of an emergency, “system which was activated by Cecopi when the Ministry of Ecological Transition recognized on October 29 at 8 p.m. the imminent risk of rupture of the Forata dam.”
