Alcanarin Terres de l’Ebre, has suffered In just six years, four serious episodes of storms have caused significant damage.: in 2018, 2021, 2023 and the last one took place last week, when part of southern Catalonia was on red alert due to a DANA, which despite not leaving serious incidents, has normalized the preventive confinement of the population due to this type of phenomena and has put on the table the need to review flood zones, since 15% of the urbanized areas of Catalonia are built in ravines or streams.
It is no coincidence that Alcanar is the epicenter of these natural disasters. The fact of being next to the sea and with the Montsià mountain range behind it combined with the terrible urban planning of the sixties and seventies and buildings next to ravines create the perfect storm to be very vulnerable to phenomena such as DANA, which are increasingly extreme and frequent due to climate change and global warming. So are populations like Les Cases d’Alcanar or Ulldecona, which also bore the main impact of the last DANA.
The mayor of Alcanar, Joan Roigexplains that there are ways to intervene with long-term actions and that, in some cases, they will involve complicated decisions, such as expropriation or moving some buildings in areas not so exposed to flooding. Now, to deal with it, experts in emergencies, architecture or the climate crisis are needed. Roig is very clear: “The solution lies in the technical sphere. The political discourse is exhausted, we can no longer contribute anything more. Solutions must be channeled through expert knowledge“he details.
As a result of the DANAS in recent years, the Alcanar City Council created a panel of experts to implement technical solutions to deal with floods. Roig considers that The panel of experts should be the way to follow for all municipalities that have the same problems than Alcanar, “which are basically those found in the Mediterranean arc”. “They must be experts in meteorology, geology, urban planning or civil protection,” he details.
Now, Roig believes that “the task of articulating these groups should fall to supramunicipal administrationsthat is, in the Catalan or Spanish Government, since this is a general problem.” “We already know what preventive measures we must take, we have them in mind, but City councils, especially the smaller ones, do not have the skills or the appropriate professionals to carry them out.“, laments the mayor of Alcanar.
“It is impossible for city councils to end up building distribution or rolling bases, increasing channeling or diverting channels from one place to another without the technical part,” he details. That’s why, calls for professionals in different fields to be able to do it.
Once articulated, Roig details that these teams of experts “should not move from the city councils until the projects are drafted to be eligible for the subsidies and aid that the governments end up determining,” he explains. In this sense, the mayor demands “economic resources, but also technical ones so that the former make sense.”
“It is not much use to us to receive a subsidy of 5, 10 or 15 million for preventive measures projects if we do not have the technical capacity to be able to write these projects. Therefore, it is money that ends up being lost or that ends up in large cities because they have greater technical capacity,” he explains. Roig gives the example of a subsidy from the Catalan Water Agency (HERE) that have ended up losing because, as is logical in small town councils, “Your technician does not have the knowledge to write projects of these magnitudes.”
Roig met last week with the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illaand agreed that the Government will participate in the next technical table convened by the council at the end of December to analyze the preventive measures that should be applied in the town to deal with floods.
The participation of experts and technicians is “basic”
Cambrilsin Camp de Tarragona, is another town exposed to storms. The mouth of the Riudoms stream presents one of the highest risks. The proximity of this stream to urbanized areas and infrastructure increases the danger of overflows, especially during episodes of torrential rain. One of the episodes that left the greatest trace in this Tarragona coastal town was the storm Glorythat It caused many problems such as traffic outages, flooding, falling trees and damage to walkways.
The Councilor for Environment and Sustainability of the Cambrils City Council, Hélène Arcelinhighlights the work of preventive cleaning of the streams and focuses on American sugarcane, an invasive species capable of growing and reproducing very quickly. Apart from the cleaning, to stop its growth, a biodegradable tarp will be installed. An action that has the collaboration of the ACA.
On the other hand, Arcelin details that The City Council has prepared a flood plan that has an emergency committee and which includes various actions that involve different areas, such as civil protection or police. “It is a plan in which action is taken before and during the emergency,” he details. To this end, he points out that the participation of experts and technicians is “basic”but city councils often lack the necessary specialists in very specific topics. “The council has engineers but “Sometimes we need extra support or more specific training”he explains.
Regarding construction in flood zones, Arcelin admits that there is concern. “Now we have to look how we solve it, minimizing the effects or thinking about some type of alternative system,” he comments.
Preventive confinement, new normal?
Alcanar has been knowing for years what preventive confinement is when there are forecasts of heavy rain and flooding. “When we receive a red alert, we automatically Classes are suspended and people stay at home. We know that a DANA is very unpredictable,” says Roig, who regrets that at first they were criticized and called exaggerated, “but now it has been seen that it is really necessary”. In this sense, celebrate the preventive confinements of these last weeks, whether for a few hours or a day: “How much is a person’s life worth?”he asks.
Roig believes that the latest DANA has been a turning point. “It pains me that a catastrophe of this magnitude had to happen, on a human level, for the administrations to react. We have known for years and first-hand that “The streets of a town can turn into rivers of mud in a matter of minutes.”ends.
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