The Minister of Justice and Interior, Salome Pradasresponsible for the Emergency Department of the Valencian Country, learned the same day from DANA, at 8:00 p.m., that the Generalitat had the ES-Alert system, which allows mass alerts to communicate notices to all citizens, recommending avoid any type of movement. By that time, the floods had already caused multiple damages in several towns.
Pradas has admitted its ignorance in an interview in À Puntthe regional television of the Valencian Country. At 8:00 p.m. on October 29, the Secretary of State for Ecological Transition, Hugo Morán“He tells me that he is in Colombia, that he is learning about the situation, and he tells me that he cannot guarantee that the dam will not break,” the councilor said.
It is then that a technician informs them of the existence of ES-Alert, which was not yet regulated or included in the regional plans, since it was a draft pending approval by the Civil Protection Committee. “It is when they give us this information, I insist, the only verbal information regarding the Forata dam, that we decide to activate ES-Alert, a unanimous decision by Cecopi [el centro de coordinación de emergencias] and advised by the technicians,” said the counselor.
However, the ES-Alert system was publicly presented in the Valencian Country on October 27, 2022, under the Government of Ximo Puigaccording to local newspapers at the time. The presentation took place at the L’Eliana Emergency Headquarters, where Cecopi is located. During the event, the general director of the Interior of the Generalitat, Salva Almenarled the demonstration, which included a first failed test and a second successful one of mass sending of alerts to local mobile phones.
Almenar pointed out that the system would be operational “in a few months” and explained that it would allow “direct messages to be sent to the population” with instructions in cases of emergency or disaster. In addition, the Generalitat sent this 2024 a circular on flood prevention in which he announced that the ES-Alert system had been active since this year.
Before sending the alerts and Morán calling Pradas, the Government delegate in the Valencian Country, Pilar Bernabetried to contact her three times – at 12:23, 12:48 and 2:00 p.m. However, the councilor maintains that in these communications Bernabé did not transmit any specific alert and that the first serious warnings came from the mayor of Utiel.
The ES-Alert alert system uses mobile phones to warn of natural disasters through direct messages to the population. This system works by sending alerts to a large number of devices simultaneously, without saturating the communications network. The GSMA, the international association of mobile operators, emphasizes that this technology allows messages to be sent to millions of phones in seconds without affecting the network.
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