The massive alert asking the population not to leave home during the afternoon of October 29 could have been sent at least two hours earlier. As elDiario.es has been able to confirm, the company that manages 112 was notified shortly after 6:00 p.m. that an alarm was going to be sent to all mobile phones. That warning, however, was not sent due to the doubts of the Minister of Justice and person responsible for the coordination of Emergencies, Salomé Pradas, and due to the absence of the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, who did not arrive until after 7:30 p.m. meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi). The alert was sent at 8:11 p.m., with hundreds of people already trapped.
President Carlos Mazón was neither there nor expected. The harshest and most terrifying DANA of the 21st century was hitting Valencia and its top political official went from event to event and had a copious meal with a journalist to talk, not about the storm, but about maneuvering to change the direction of public television without contest. . At the head of a crisis of unprecedented magnitude was Minister Pradas. It was she, and not Mazón, who was still being explained the situation at 7:45 p.m., who decided that the massive alert would be launched at 8:11 p.m. to warn the population not to circulate. The warning came late, with the Poyo ravine and the Magro river overflowing for hours and dragging away lives, vehicles and houses.
Could the mass alert have been launched earlier and with a stronger message? Yes. As elDiario.es has been able to confirm from sources at Ilunion IT Services, the company that manages the emergency call system, at 6:10 p.m., the person responsible for 112 operations was already warned that an alert was going to be sent. to all mobile phones due to the storm. He was also notified that citizens would be urged to follow the instructions that would be given through À PuntValencian public television.
That notice, however, remained in standby for more than two hours and was not sent until 8:11 p.m., when Minister Salomé Pradas decided to launch it and after an arduous debate among the technicians about the content of the message that should be sent, as elDiario.es has confirmed with technical sources and Emergency policies of the Generalitat, the Provincial Council of Valencia and the institutions dependent on the Government of Spain.
Contacted by this newspaper, the Department of Justice and Interior did not want to make any comment. When asked by this newspaper, the Ilunion company has not offered any official version regarding this information.
At 6:00 p.m. on October 29, at the Cecopi meeting at the L’Eliana Emergency Coordination Center, they were already informed that the Poyo ravine was transporting 1,725 cubic meters per second of water – almost four times the flow of the river. Ebro – and that the Forata dam had begun to discharge due to the danger of overflowing. The information obtained by elDiario.es indicates that the decision not to send the alert at 6:00 p.m. was political, not technical, since the company that manages the emergency services was notified that this notice was going to be sent when it was barely ten minutes before six in the afternoon.
Sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition also confirmed to this editorial team that, around 6 p.m., the president of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ), Miguel Polo, put on the table the possibility of sending “massive alerts to the entire population.” through the Es-alert system to all mobile phones in the province of Valencia.
Emergency sources consulted by this newspaper explain that, around 7:00 p.m. and after several breaks at Cecopi with the councilor coming and going, Pradas informed the participants in the meeting that the mass alert would be sent, although shortly after 6:00 p.m. The subcontractor had been informed that it would be sent. “It takes a long time to send the Es-alert message because they fight over how to write it,” laments a source present at Cecopi.
The counselor, these sources say, directly separated her team in the meeting and began to ask the technicians, who were very hesitant. “She consults with the fire chief and the deputy director of emergencies, among others, who do not agree,” he adds. At that time, according to another source present at the message negotiations, there were still those who insisted on sending an alert that was not “excessively alarming.”
Discussion on how to write the alert
During that hour, the councilor constantly asked “what do we do, what do we do”, entered and left the meeting to speak with President Mazón, but did not report on the content of the conversation, this Emergency source points out. “And he insists that the CHJ gives contradictory information, that the representative says all the time that he does not know what is going to happen,” he adds. After a long time debating, in a tense context, one of the representatives blurted out: “Let the fucking message be sent!” and “there is no need to write a text for professors”, expressions that show the tension of the meeting.
Finally, and after an arduous debate, the writing to send the message to the population concluded with a brief and not very alarmist text: “Civil Protection Alert due to heavy rains and as a preventive measure, any type of displacement should be avoided in the province of Valencia. Stay tuned for future notices through this channel and official sources, on X @GVA112 and on À Punt.” In the municipalities of the Ribera region, some councils had issued messages and statements hours before in which they asked their neighbors to go up to the first floors of their buildings.
After 7:30 p.m. and with the decision to launch the message already made, the president of the Generalitat arrived at Cecopi. Various sources present at the meeting of the emergency coordination body have explained that, when Mazón arrived, they had to explain everything to him again. After approximately half an hour after its arrival, ‘Emergencias 112 Comunitat Valenciana’ finally sent the automatic alert to the cell phones of all citizens of the province of Valencia. It was already late: a good part of the municipalities were completely flooded and their neighbors were fighting to survive.
The information published by elDiario.es also shows that the Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, not only debated at 7:15 p.m. about the operation of these alerts, as reported by Cadena SER, but that an hour before, at 18:10, the company that manages emergencies in Valencia had already been informed that this measure was going to be taken, although in the end the step was not taken. Pradas initially lied by stating that it was not until after 8:00 p.m. that he learned that this alert system existed on mobile phones, when a technician informed him of it.
The Cecopi meeting started at 5:00 p.m. on October 29 and at 5:35 p.m. the hydrological alert for the Magro and Júcar rivers from the confluence with Algemesí was already on the table. At 5:40 p.m., the councilor stopped the meeting for half an hour to take a period of reflection.
At 5:59 p.m., the CHJ reported that the Forata reservoir had opened floodgates and at 6:00 p.m. that the Poyo ravine was transporting 1,725 cubic meters per second of water. It was when the meeting resumed that Polo himself reported this data and, given the current situation, suggested the possibility of launching the mass alert. Just ten minutes later, the emergency services were notified that the alarm was going to be sent.
At 6:00 p.m., 2,000 calls entered 112 with a wait of 4 minutes
After 6:00 p.m., calls to the Emergency service also began to accumulate. From early in the morning, 112 sources explained to this newspaper that they had a very high volume of calls that increased as the day progressed.
At 6:14 p.m., the waiting time for calls to the Emergency service was four minutes. In that current hour, more than 2,000 calls came in that only thirty employees had to manage. The rush was such that the staff for the afternoon shift was reinforced by assigning overtime or recruiting employees who were scheduled to work that day. Although the 112 sources consulted describe it as “usual” for staff to be reinforced when a difficult day is anticipated, they admit that they had never experienced a situation as overwhelming as that of October 29.
At 8:38 p.m., when many of the affected towns were already completely flooded, the waiting time at 112 was more than nine minutes and there were almost a hundred calls in queue. There were so many calls for help that 112 collapsed and many victims ended up calling the Civil Guard and other State Security Forces and Bodies to lose help and rescues.
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