The General Head of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), Javier Marcos, assured this Friday that his troops began to deploy in the province of Valencia on October 29 at 3:41 p.m., “hours before receiving official orders,” when they saw that “the situation was getting frankly difficult” due to the flooding that was beginning to occur due to the deadly DANA that day.
In one press conference at the Moncloa Palace To take stock of the work of the UME in the area, where the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, was also present, Marcos has released some images to support the thesis that the UME was in the area “from minute one.”
“Although we were previously aware that the situation was getting worse, at two in the afternoon we learned that the Valencian Community decreed the operational situation. We had already been alerted for hours and, as soon as we see that the situation is getting really difficult long before any elevation to another level, we leave,” has been reported in general.
Specifically, he indicated that the first UME vehicle left the Bétera base “at 3:41 p.m.” and that It took almost two hours to arrive in Chiva. Marcos has shown some images recorded from one of those vehicles at 6:05 p.m. on the A3, near the aforementioned Valencian town.
“They say that the truth suffers, but does not perish”the general has proclaimed, emphasizing that the soldiers who performed “heroic acts” to save people on that journey “they do not deserve the information that is being seen”. “There are sectors of the population for whom we arrived late, but we were in those rescues,” Marcos emphasized.
As detailed, a total of 96 soldiers left Bétera, 56 managed to reach the Utiel-Requena area, but the 40 who did not they had to turn around and during the return journey they were rescuing people who had been trapped on the highway, as well as responding to warnings in Paiporta that they were receiving from CECOPI.
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