THE DANA which hit the east of the peninsula, in particular the province of Valencia, has already become the largest natural disaster in the history of Spain. These types of torrential and unpredictable rains are occurring with increasing frequency, and are predicted to occur more and more regularly due to climate change.
Pierre Arcosdirector of the Emergency and Disaster Research Unit at the University of Oviedo, explains in laSexta that our country must be prepared for this type of phenomena.
“We are facing an extreme phenomenon which, due to climate change, will become more and more frequent in Spain.” said the doctor.
For this reason, he insists that it is essential to develop the alert system to make it much more concise and effective: “Messages must be clear, short, credible and repeated. “Exercises and tests must be carried out, and they must arrive while giving the population time to protect themselves, which was not the case.”
In addition, he assures that the Generalitat Valenciana took too long to alert the population. “The international standard for this type of flooding is between one and two hours to warn, and 12 hours to be warned. the population did not have time to protect themselves“, he concludes.
