The president of the Valencian Government, Carlos Mazón, stated in his appearance in the Corts last Friday, November 15 to give an account of his disastrous management of the DANA that has left at least 220 dead, that “he maintained his agenda fully aware of the situation ”. The vice president, Susana Camarero, also justified that Mazón kept his agenda, including his controversial meal, and did not appear at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) until after 7:30 p.m.: “I was at a working lunch because I had no information neither from the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) nor from the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) that it had to be somewhere else because the situation was different than the one that had been mentioned to the president and the Government delegate, which indicated that at 6:00 p.m. the situation subsided, that they were heading towards Cuenca and, therefore, that the DANA problem was over.”
Beyond the fact that the Aemet issued a red notice at 7:36 a.m. in the morning, maintaining it throughout the day, and that the CHJ sent a warning bounced by the Generalitat Emergencies at 12:20 p.m. due to the danger of overflowing the Poyo ravine, These words from both Mazón and Camarero are surprising given that from the first hour of that fateful October 29, Á Punt broadcast live the havoc that DANA was causing, especially in Utiel, where the flooding of the Magro River began to flood its streets in the morning and at noon a missing person was already registered in l’Alcúdia, who days later was found dead. Their meteorologists did not fail to warn of the danger. However, the former Minister of Justice, Salomé Pradas, despite the warnings from Aemet and the CHJ, called the Cecopi at 5:00 p.m. and Mazón maintained her agenda, including the controversial lunch with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana.
The journalist has questioned that, as Mazón himself said, he was “fully aware of the situation,” since through a spokesperson he recently assured that the president did not speak to him at any time about DANA or convey any concern about it. the temporary It is even more surprising, if possible, considering that Mazón’s presidential team transfers almost in real time everything that is broadcast on À Punt and published by most media outlets.
Specifically, as can be seen from the special programming of that October 29At 2:00 p.m., public radio and television had already been reporting live and uninterrupted for seven hours on DANA, programming that continued uninterruptedly for about 17 hours. At that time, the midday news program begins, the most watched space on the network, where it summarizes the day.
At that time (2:00 p.m.), Mazón was meeting with the unions and employers to talk about the regional budgets, a meeting in which he criticized the University of Valencia for having suspended classes, in a measure that he considered exaggerated. But as the cameras of À Punt reflected, La Ribera Alta, Catadau, Llombai, Alfarp had already taken the worst part with torrential rains that had turned the streets into ravines. Vehicles swept away, drivers rescued and classes failed throughout the area. The roof of the Llombai and l’Alcúdia cooperatives had collapsed. In Alzira, firefighters also rescued two drivers by helicopter. In many points of the Canal de Navarrés, La Costera, Vall d’Albaida, Bunyol and Utiel-Requena more than 100 liters had fallen in just one hour.
In the news it was emphasized that the Valencia area was on red alert and they already said that the A-7 had been cut off near Montortal, in l’Alcúdia, towards Alicante with nearly 300 trucks stuck. The drivers of the A-3 also suffered, which was already closed near Requena. The town of Tous was cut off all morning. The Military Emergency Unit was already prepared to intervene.
Attention was focused on the Magro River. The Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat had issued a special hydrological alert notice in the municipalities of the river basin: “Attention because we have breaking news. The Magro River has just overflowed near Utiel. What does this mean, that all that water has to go down here (Carlet). And its mouth into the Júcar, in Algemesí, is very worrying,” warned the À Punt correspondent. It was around 2:30 p.m., the time at which Mazón began his meal, first justified by the Presidency as personal and then as professional, at the Ventorro.
At 2:14 p.m. there was a live telephone connection with the mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, who stated that the situation was “very critical, horrendous” and claimed that he did not remember “having seen anything like it”: “The river has overflowed and now the streets look like rivers,” he stated.
At 3:24 p.m., the Government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, announced the activation of the UME at the request of the Generalitat Valenciana, to address the situation caused by DANA in the area of Utiel (Valencia).
Until that time, according to the Ministry of Justice and Interior, resources had been mobilized to address the incidents that had occurred in the municipalities of the Valencian Community and more than 500 calls had been received through the ‘112 CV’ emergency telephone number. ‘. The storm had caused incidents on 21 roads in the road network, the total closure of the ports of València and Sagunt and the impact of several Metrovalencia lines.
Some of the operations carried out had been several rescues in the Ribera Alta area, mostly involving stranded cars or people requesting help to leave their homes and the rescue helicopter had been mobilized. In addition, people from a Carlet nursing home had been rehoused in other rooms after one of the pavilions had flooded.
None of this was enough for Mazón to suspend or interrupt his meal to be at the Cecopi at 5:00 p.m., which had already been called. It arrived after 7:30 p.m. and the message to the population was not sent until 8:11 p.m.
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