The Valencian Generalitat has issued a statement in which it assures that the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) confirmed the risk of breaking the Forata dam at 8:00 p.m. on October 29, the day on which most of the effects of DANA occurred in the Huerta Sur of Valencia.
The Valencian government said this Saturday that the state agency had previously informed the Emergency Center of its intention “true and real” declaration of Scenario 3 of the Forata Dam Emergency Plan after 7:30 p.m.
“The imminent risk of breakage was reported at 8:00 p.m. by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, by phone call to the Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas,” says the Government in a statement.
According to the Government, after this telephone conversation and after a deliberation and agreement within the CECOPI (with telematic presence of the Government Delegation and the CHJ and in-person assistance of the Generalitat, Provincial Council of Valencia and the UME)“it was decided to send the massive alert message to the populationwhich arrives at 8:11 p.m.
The statement maintains that it is “fake” that at the meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (CECOPI) between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. “there will be alerts about the risks caused by the flooding of the Poyo ravine”, as Aemet maintains.
The Aemet had previously said that “the possibility that the Forata dam would collapse was mentioned at the Cecopi meeting around 5:30 p.m. on October 29, almost three hours before the Generalitat activated the Es-Alert system. of mass sending of messages to the mobile phones of the population in Valencia”.
The Government insists that “It is absolutely false that this happened” and maintains that although the situation met the conditions for establishing Scenario 3, “the CHJ decided not to declare it, an option whose technicians and leaders did discuss and verbalize during the CECOPI meeting. It was not until the call from the Secretary of State for the Environment Environment when they were alerted to the true and certain seriousness of the dam’s situation.”
The statement says that establishing Scenario 3 “determines the legal obligation of the Director of Exploitation and the Dam Safety Plan, to issue the corresponding alerts and notices to the population directly, as established by the Basic Civil Protection Planning Guideline to the Risk of Floods”.
“The Generalitat does not deny that the situation at the Forata dam was discussed around 5:30 p.m. during the CECOPI meeting. Not in vain, after receiving the corresponding communications from the CHJ about the situation in Forata, at 5:35 p.m., Emergencies sends a hydrological alert on the Magro and Júcar rivers starting from the confluence in Algemesí and notifies all the riverside municipalities of the Magro River and the Júcar River from Algemesí to the mouth in Cullera to activate all the corresponding precautionary measures,” the text continues.
The text indicates that this flow “implies that widespread overflows may occur in areas close to the river” so “It is advisable to keep the population away from areas close to the river” and this new hydrological alert “is notified to the affected municipalities according to the provisions of the Plan and by telephone.”
“The situation at the dam begins to get complicated around 7 p.m., when the CHJ sends an email to 112 warning that the dam is pouring 633,678 m3/s into the Magro River. As the situation at the dam becomes more complicated, They are precisely technicians of the Generalitat those who ask direct questions to those responsible for the CHJ present at Cecopi so that they could clearly specify the seriousness of the situation,” the Generalitat statement continues.
The CHJ “responds that it cannot guarantee the situation in the reservoir, since more water enters than is discharged and they indicate to Emergencies that at that moment the dam is releasing water through the spillwaysbut that when more water enters than it relieves, it would fill up and that the pressure of that flow could affect the foundation of the dam and cause it to break.”
“It was from that moment, and in the face of the insistence and lack of clear responses from the CHJwhen the Generalitat evaluates all possible risks and when faced with the direct question they ask the CHJ: ‘What time do we have once the water fills the dam to its possible breakage?’, the CHJ answers, at first response, three hours, and in a second response, given a few minutes later by the CHJ technicians present electronically at the CECOPI meeting, it says that that time drops to two hours,” the text continues.
The statement adds that at 7:33 p.m., the CHJ informed Emergencies that the dam is releasing 900,046 m3/s that can reach up to 1500 m3/s into the Magro River. “and this is when you enter de facto in Scenario 3when the probability of breakage is very high, or has already begun, making it practically inevitable that the flood wave generated by the breakdown or breakage will occur.”
“Despite this, it is not officially declared by the CHJ. This circumstance Yes, it is discussed verbally within the CECOPI by the representatives of the CHJ”, says the text.
The text also says that “it is false that from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. there was talk of the increase in the flow of the Poyo ravine. As has been explained, and proven with the emails that the CHJ issued to the Coordination Center of Emergencies, from 4:13 p.m., when it was reported that the flow was 28.7 m3/s until 6:43 p.m., when it was reported that the flow was 1,686 m3/s no communication occurs“.
The Government describes as “extemporaneous” that the Aemet “talks about what it has no competence because the monitoring of flows in rivers, reservoirs, ravines, regulation systems and flood zones, It is a function of the CHJ”. He adds that the “statements made by Aemet contradict the official chronology of the events that the CHJ has recognized.”
The text concludes by saying that before the “non-existent evidentiary support of its statements, the Generalitat demands that Aemet be rigorous in the face of a catastrophe in which thousands of people have been affected.
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