The professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and president of the Valencian Forestry Platform, Rafael Delgado, assures that the DANA that has affected the Valencian Community in recent days has been “the chronicle of an announced misfortune” because “all the risk factors were there for it to happen, and the only thing missing was the opportunity”. Furthermore, he warns that these weather events “will continue to occur” and “probably with more virulence” as long as “rain is not able to be taught to rain.”
At the same time, the expert maintains that in this episode of rain the local emergency plans “have not worked” given “the confusion and actions of many people”, a situation that he attributes to a “deficit in communication and training that, unfortunately, has cost many lives.”
“It makes no sense that there are plans on the shelves of an administration and that, when the emergency arrives, people do exactly what they should not do because they do not know the protocol or the magnitude of the phenomenon they are facing,” he argues.
This is how the UPV professor puts it in an article, in which he explains the need to analyze the “very serious situation” caused by DANA with “the data in hand, the technical-scientific perspective and the appropriate scale” to overcome “some everyday and flat-earther discourses.”
The expert points out in this analysis, collected by Europa Press, that this episode of rain has meant “the second natural disaster” at the national level “since there are records” due to the amount of human losses. In this context, it emphasizes that the risk of any emergency on the population and its property “is given by three parameters: dangerousness, exposure and vulnerability” and the severity of an emergency “depends on the alignment” of them.
The professor specifically analyzes the humanitarian catastrophe of the Rambla del Poyo, in Valencia, from a forestry perspective. In this regard, he points out that the “destructive power” of both this ravine and the Magro and Turia rivers has been “truly extraordinary” in this episode. However, he specifies that, if the DANA episode that caused it is analyzed, “it was not by far the most important in terms of total precipitation.”
Climate change “is already here”
To explain this situation, he relies on consulting “other data that is giving us clues about what could have happened” and in which “we will find factors that increase the danger of an episode like this.” Thus, he points to the manifestations of climate change or global warming that, he warns, “are already here.”
In this regard, he points out that The Mediterranean Sea “since 2020 has been breaking temperature records month after month”which means “the sure announcement of disaster, because it means adding fuel to the cauldron that cooks our cold drops.”
At this point, he warns: “Experts tell us, and the temperature of the Mediterranean guarantees it, that in the future these extreme behaviors will be more frequent and greater.” For this reason, he warns that the consequences of climate change “have arrived and have a direct implication on the danger of cold drops.”
In summary, he points out that in this episode the danger, exposure and vulnerability “seem to have aligned to cause the great misfortune”, to which are added “other variables that have added more vulnerability, such as the fact that the emergency occurred in a rush hour back home after work.
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