“The president of the Generalitat was making decisions based on the real-time information provided by the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ). And when there is a period of significant information blackout, more than two hours, crucial for making decisions, you will understand that it does not seem fair to me to try to transfer responsibilities to those who were simply making decisions based on information that is the responsibility of others.” The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, spoke in these terms this Wednesday, November 13, to argue the delay in sending the alert to the population on October 29 at 8:12 p.m., when the majority of the populations of l ‘Horta Sud de València were flooded and thousands of people were trapped as a result of DANA, which on that day alone claimed more than 200 lives.
The period of the supposed information blackout, as the popular ones claimed, was between 4:13 p.m. and 6:43 p.m. According to their argument, at that impasse they would not have received any communication from the CHJ despite the sudden increase in the flow of the Poyo ravine that was subsequently recorded and that caused the disaster.
The statement is clearly false according to the 194 emails with different notices and alerts sent by the CHJ, an organization dependent on the Ministry of Ecological Transition headed by Minister and Vice President Teresa Ribera, to which elDiario.es has had access. During the entire day of August 29, many other notices were sent from the CHJ to Civil Protection, in addition to the two key emails at 4:37 p.m. and 4:50 p.m., advanced by this newspaper with which the Civil Protection of the Generalitat was informed. of the increase in rain in Chiva – at the head of the Poyo ravine – exceeding the thresholds of the rain gauge installed in the town, which gave rise to the automatic sending of notifications.
Specifically, only in the period from 2:30 p.m., when President Carlos Mazón was at a meal in which he offered the direction of public television to a Valencian journalist, until his arrival at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi). After 7:30 p.m., the Emergency Coordination Center (CCE) of the Generalitat received a total of 62 notices from the Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH) of the Confederation. These are different situations linked to DANA, such as exceeding thresholds in flows and rain gauges. When these limits are exceeded, the system automatically generates a notice that is sent to the CCE, where Civil Protection is located.
In relation to the Poyo ravine, of the 62 warnings, there were new information emails at 4:57 p.m. and 5:02 p.m. on the Poyo rambla in Riba-Roja, at 5:27 p.m. due to the rainfall in Chiva and at 5:57 p.m. again on the ravine of Poyo in Riba-Roja. At 6:43 p.m., the Confederation sent the last warning through the sensor located in the ravine, near Riba-roja, which was already registering 1,686 cubic meters per second, which caused the force of the water to drag the measurement system and However, the alert was not sent to citizens until an hour and a half later.
As for the other critical point, that of the Forata dam, a first warning appears at 3:54 p.m.; another at 4:52 p.m. warning of the activation of scenario 1; one more at 4:56 p.m. where there was a warning of outflow in the reservoir; and later, at 5:04 p.m., scenario 2 is declared. Still at 5:23 p.m., at 5:54 p.m. and at 6:33 p.m., new warnings occur due to flow outflow.
All of these notifications, along with others related to other flows and rain gauges, were recorded during Mazón’s absence at Cecopi, which was established at 5:00 p.m. despite the fact that the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) issued the red level warning to at 07:36 on the morning of October 29 and maintained it throughout the day and that the CHJ reported the collapse of the Poyo ravine at 12:07 p.m. (although it is true that the decrease in flow was later reported on three occasions), which led to an alert from the CCE at 12:20 p.m. that remained active throughout the day.
President Mazón plans to give explanations of all these situations this Friday starting at 11:30 a.m. in the Corts Valencianes. It is expected that, then, the Valencian president will draw the lines of a new Executive, an attempt to establish a firewall for those who ask for his resignation. Mazón wants to open a new stage and changing the pieces is key.
The Generalitat insists on the responsibility of the CHJ
At the end of the day, the Generalitat Valenciana has issued a statement in which it insists on clarifying the powers that correspond to the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) and the State Meteorological Agency in response “to the statements with inaccurate and imprecise references of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who has assured that there was no information gap, but rather direct communication between the CHJ and the Generalitat Valenciana.”
The Generalitat wants to remind the Minister of the Interior that “the different types of communication sent by the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation through its Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH) refer to data on the intensity of rainfall (obtained from pluviographs) , and to the flow monitoring data in rivers, reservoirs, ravines, regulation systems and flood zones.” In this sense, “the CHJ has the obligation to inform the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat about the relevant increases in flows that occur in the rivers and ravines of their respective basins.”
In addition, the Generalitat highlights that “the CHJ is part of the Risk Monitoring Group of the Cecopi Advisory Committee, and, therefore, in addition to its informative function, it also evaluates the situation of risk of overflow in the river basins and advise the steering committee on the protection measures they consider.”
In the opinion of the Generalitat, “it is completely inappropriate to maintain that with the data from a rain gauge located in Chiva or on the Rambla del Poyo in Riba-roja, the Emergency Center should have assumed how much flow was going to circulate along the Rambla del Poyo . Proposing or suggesting this is due to a profound lack of knowledge of the hydraulic functioning of a hydrographic basin, or an attempt to confuse public opinion by trying to justify and hide the fact that for two and a half hours, the CHJ, between 4:13 p.m. and 6:43 p.m. on October 29, did not inform Emergencies about the evolution of the flow of the Poyo ravine, despite the fact that the warning of the risk of overflow was its obligation and form of its functions and competencies.”
The Valencian Government insists that the CHJ did not send “any notice of an increase in the flow in the Poyo ravine between 4:13 p.m. and 6:43 p.m. on October 29, something confirmed by the basin organization itself. In that flow information blackout in the Poyo Rambla for two and a half hours, the flow went from 28.7 m3/s to 1686 m3/s. Or what is the same: at 4:13 p.m., 280,000 liters of water per second passed through the ravine, and two and a half hours later, hours in which the CHJ did not notify the Emergencies of this circumstance, 1,686,000 liters of water were already falling. water per second down the ravine.”
#Júcar #Confederation #notices #Generalitats #Emergencies #Mazón #eating
