The head of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), Lieutenant General Javier Marcos, has vindicated this Friday the response that all emergency services have given to the catastrophe caused by DANA and, in particular, the actions of the Armed Forces. .
“No one could foresee the magnitude of what happened,” he said in an appearance at the Ministry of Defense after the daily meeting of the crisis committee to monitor the tragedy. It is his second public appearance since the flood, the first last Monday at the Moncloa Palace.
Faced with criticism about the size of the response to the magnitude of the tragedy, the general referred to some words from an affected neighbor to whom he confessed that he himself asked if he thought something had gone wrong. “He started to cry and told me that no one was late,” he confessed, pointing to the amount of water that devastated several towns in minutes.
The head of the UME, the highest military responsible for the deployment, has insisted that they intervene “as soon as possible.” «From the point of view of the UME, what came to me did not fail. “Everything that was possible was reported in a timely manner,” he insisted, also pointing out on several occasions that the relationship between the Valencian Community and the Ministry of the Interior “was correct.”
The Armed Forces have responsibility for an area of 4,608 square kilometers, 43% of the surface of the province of Valencia. So far, he has maintained that “a lot of progress has been made and a lot of work has been done” although “there is still a lot of work to do.”
A total of 8,478 UME and Army personnel are deployed and there are four towns still marked as red zones of maximum need: Paiporta, Catarroja, Masanasa and Chiva. “It is not a military operation, it is an emergency operation with military forces,” he claimed.
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