To date, the state security forces and bodies have not yet clarified the figure of less than two hundred reports of missing persons following the DANA which devastated the province of Valence.
The data, unofficial and approximate, were collected by ABC from sources of maximum solvency working in the special operation deployed in response to an event such as that caused by the DANA with multiple victims in which specialized agents of the Civil Guard and the National Police and a forensic office from Valencia participate.
According to the latest official statistics provided this Monday, November 4 at 9 p.m., the Institute of Legal Medicine of Valence carried out 190 autopsies on the bodies of victims of the worst cold drop of the 21st century. That is to say all the bodies that entered the City of Justice. Forensic experts managed to identify 111 people as “the entry of deceased persons and the subsequent practice of autopsies slowed down” in recent days, according to the Data Integration Center (CID) set up to cope to this emergency.
Almost all positive identifications were produced by the fingerprint comparisonwhile seven of them were made through DNA analysis.
The CID is a technical body It is composed of a Forensic Office and an Office of State Security Forces and Bodies with specialized agents from the Civil Guard and the National Police, and its main function is to gather and supervise the different identification reports carried out by the different institutions. people killed in multi-casualty events.
All reports of missing persons in the province are centralized at the Zapadores National Police station and the Patraix Civil Guard barracks, both located in the city of Valencia. Families residing in other municipalities were accompanied by agents to complete the process.
Of the figure of less than two hundred complaints processed, there may still be different cases. For example, the fact that some missing people are among the 80 bodies still unidentified. It is also likely that some people who have found their loved one, alive or dead, will not come forward to withdraw their complaint. Or even that the same disappearance of a single person was alerted by several different relatives.
For this reason, the authorities do not have data “that still responds to reality” on the number of missing people, as explained by the Ministers of Transport and the Interior, Oscar Puente And Fernando Grande Marlaskarespectively.
To know the exact extent of the mortality caused by DANA in Valencia, we will have to wait “several weeks”, since the sources consulted by ABC expect that there will be “a trickle” of body discoveries. It is not excluded that bodies will be found washed up by the sea “in Ibiza or Tarragona”.
From now on, “a scenario of a massive increase in deaths is no longer envisaged” after excluding cases like that of the Bonaire shopping center parking lot.
In fact, the forensic team activated last week was reduced by half and went from sixty to thirty personnel. The reinforcement professionals arriving from different points of Spain have returned to their destination and this Tuesday those from the province of Valencia are already operating in a sort of “return to normal”, except for the fact that ordinary consultations have been suspended .
Image of the exterior of the morgue installed at Feria Valencia
THE psychologists and social workers mobilized last week to care for missing families were also demobilized.
In this regard, the government manages a “fairly low” number of missing people due to DANA which has not yet been taken into account. “caution”. But professionals consulted by ABC warn that “not all of the missing have been reported.” In these cases, the bodies will be identified using the fingerprints that appear in the National Police databases.
The tasks of rescue teams They are now focusing on points such as the mouths of ravines and rivers, beaches or Lake La Albufera. The forensic experts consulted predict difficulties in finding these victims: “What will cost the most will be the uprisings.”
