“It is not possible for a firefighter to give orders to a general,” say senior officers

The senior commanders of the Army and the Military Emergency Unit express the feelings that many soldiers, from different echelons, are feeling these days in Valencia. The problem is the slow pace of deployment to combat the effects of DANA.

Members of the armed forces displaced in Valencia admit to their frustration, especially in the first days, because they believe they could have started their work sooner. They had no choice but to wait for orders from the commanders.

One of them is Juan Carlos Domingo, a retired army major general. In recent days, General Francisco Marcos, head of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), made comments controversial to many: “I can have 1,000 soldiers at the emergency gate but “I can’t come in until the emergency director gives me permission.”

Regarding these comments, General Domingo has a very clear opinion which shows that something is wrong. “One of the first things to do once normality returns is to review the response provided by the different operators of the crisis management system and the action protocols. We must review action protocols and everyone’s response to this crisis.

Attorney Carlos A. Moya specializes in military justice matters. According to him, if the situation is analyzed from a legal point of view, the comments of the EMU command could be the subject of a judicial investigation.

What the general said, that he did not act for reasons of legality, must be contrasted with the duty of assistance incumbent on all Spaniards. Failure to act may constitute a crime. What bonus here? The obligation to help or the: “They didn’t give me the order and I’m not going to set foot in the competition”? It’s something to think about.”

For General Domingo, who has experience in different countries, this delay has no justification on the part of the government.

“It is obvious that the flood happened on Tuesday and on Saturday we were still discussing who, how much and where should go. This is not acceptable. It needs to be reviewed so that this situation does not happen again. “The intervention did not meet the expectations of the affected population nor the scale of the disaster.”

From the first day, citizens perceived an intention of political calculation on the part of the central government and the Generalitat to try to mutually reject responsibility for what happened. And for this reason, the government, in the opinion of this command, should have declared a state of national emergency.

“The characteristics of the phenomenon, the extent of the damage, the territorial extension and the volume of resources necessitated from the beginning the declaration of an emergency of national interest, with the response to be given to the Government of the nation. This escape Responsibility is more difficult to understand if we do not forget that the Government Delegation of Valencia is one of the three authorities that can request this declaration.

This, he points out, “prevents the lack of information about what is happening from being considered an acceptable excuse for not doing it.”

Notice

Voices in this regard have multiplied in recent days. As published by EL ESPAÑOL, the daily reports of the Armed Forces indicate that, almost two weeks later, in many places, 50% of the work required to remove debris, waste, vehicles and sludge that accumulate on the front has not been achieved. homes of tens of thousands of people.

Currently, according to the hierarchical line, the emergency director continues to be held by the person who heads the department responsible for civil protection and emergency management. In this case, the Minister of Justice and the Interior, Salomé Pradas.

Below her, in the ranking, is the regional secretary of Security and Emergencies and director of the Valencian Security and Emergency Response Agency, Emilio Argüeso.

But in practice, the person responsible for the technical management of Cecopi (Integrated Operational Coordination Center) is José Miguel Basset, chief inspector of the Valencia Fire Consortium.

For certain positions of responsibility in the army, it does not make sense, however experienced he may be, from the chief inspector: “It makes no sense for a firefighter to be above a general, but that’s how it is,” explains an active activist. commander who prefers to remain anonymous in his conversation with EL ESPAÑOL.

A general who prefers to remain anonymous and who has held some of the highest responsibilities in the state shares this diagnosis. “This is absurd, level 2 protocols are intended for emergencies that require minimal participation from the EMU and that is why there may be someone from civil protection or a firefighter in front.”

The problem, he emphasizes, “arises in situations like the current one, in which we are faced with a huge emergency in which the government does not want to declare level 3. And we see that there is a person with limited experience who is obliged to coordinate the generals of the Civil Guard, the commissioners of the National Police, the head of the UME, with thousands of men under his orders.”

The bottom line for this general is that the government has not taken control when it should. “If they had declared level 3, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska would be in charge and would have appointed someone with greater power as emergency director. Nonsense. I would have reacted differently.“.

The first head of the EMU

Many sources consulted in the Armed Forces describe the coordination between the Generalitat Valenciana and the government during the activation of the military rescue system as an “absolute disaster”. The requests of the municipalities were not heard, and it is now, a week later, that the arrival of the troops is really being felt.

Since Saturday, the deployment has increased exponentially and there are already more than 8,000 soldiers from all armies distributed in different neighborhoods of Valencia.

He General Fulgencio Coll. He is retired, but he was the first president of the UME when the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero created it. He is today an advisor and leader of Vox at the town hall of Palma de Mallorca. He believes that the EMU did not do things badly, but if the emergency had been managed by the Government, everything would have gone much better.

“The general of the UME is not responsible, when there is level 2, for what the General Directorate of Civil Protection decides or for anything that happens in the autonomous community. He would have been responsible s “he had ordered the emergency from the national portfolio.”

Coll believes that if that had been the case, things would have happened differently: “I guarantee you that the general head of the EMU If the emergency had been declared on the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, things would have been done infinitely better. All armed forces would have been mobilized inside and outside the military region, as well as by other means. “We would be talking about a totally different direction and scenario.”

For Coll, this is the great failure of this tragedy. That the government had not activated emergency level 3 and taken command. “The failure of crisis management is called Marlaska, his name is Pedro Sánchez. Instead of doing their homework, because they had all the information about the disaster, they were busy with something else, anxious to cover up the immense corruption plaguing Sánchez, the government and the PSOE.

For anyone the first head of the EMU during the Zapatero era The device is completely precarious. “We have seen that this is not enough, that currently there are still coordination problems. From the 30th or 31st, the level 3 emergency should have been declared. The State has the capacity and the power to do it and he didn’t do it.”

Politicians, he continues, “They didn’t want to roll up their sleeves, they didn’t want to get dirty. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do, which was save lives. We have the crisis in Spain because there is an incompetent government, an absent Minister of the Interior and a President of the Government. And when he appeared, it would have been better to stay outside because it was an escape in a moment of crisis. »

According to this general, the initial protocols “are good but they have not been used. That is the problem. As someone says, the law in Spain is not bad. Current legislation on protection civil law is good. What happens is that it is not bad.