The province of Valencia, the area hit hardest by the catastrophic cold drop with more than 150 deathsyou will need a strong injection of aid and investments to face the reconstruction of a good part of its basic infrastructure and transportation networks. After the passage of the floods last Tuesday Tons of sludge are still accumulating and the balance of material destruction is devastating..
Of the five Cercanías lines that make up the center of Valencia, three “have disappeared” and the service will not be able to be recovered in the coming monthsin the words of the Minister of Transport himself, Óscar Puente. Although he insisted that “there is still a lack of sufficient evidence to make a definitive analysis of the damage,” he summarizes the seriousness of what awaits ahead in the short and medium term, especially in the metropolitan area of Valenciawhich has more than 1.3 million inhabitants.
altogether something More than 80 kilometers of the rail transport network through which C-1, C-2 and C-3 circulate are completely destroyed. “Neither usable nor repairable, so they will have to be completely replaced and that is why circulation will take a long time to recover,” stated a forceful Óscar Puente during his appearance in Madrid to explain the effects of DANA and what awaits them. the citizens of the third most populated province in Spain.
Neither There are dates for the MetroValencia network to operate againwhich in addition to the problems in its networks has suffered significant damage to its main facilities where it has its own control center located near Paiporta.
Roads and logistics nodes
The damage from the tsunami of water and mud has not only affected the train tracks. The list of seriously affected highways, roads and bridges drawn up by the ministry includes: one of the major communication axes of Valencia: the A-7 that connects the entire Mediterranean coast. One of the viaducts on the Valencia ring road near Quart de Poblet has collapsed. That way 100,000 vehicles circulate daily and the minister acknowledged that “its replacement will take months,” although provisional alternatives are being studied.
That black spot of the flood is very close to the connection with the A-3, which connects with the center and Madrid at the height of Ribarroja, the large logistics center of the metropolitan area of Valencia where nearly 1,400 companies are located. Access to these polygons and their facilities has been greatly affected and at least three fatalities were recorded there. This area is a vital logistics hub for Valencia and its neighboring municipalities, with distribution platforms for chains such as Mercadona, Consum or El Corte Inglésin addition to the main node for many operators that use the port of Valencia, the largest by container traffic in Spain.
To the list of state-owned roads and large accesses to Valencia There are dozens of roads that connect the different towns of Valenciawith kilometers of lifted asphalt and bridges that have collapsed. The most dantesque case is that of the CV-36, the regional highway that connects Torrent and its 91,000 inhabitants with the capital: five of its viaducts have fallen. The Valencia Provincial Council has also announced that it will commit 25 million euros for urgent actions on its roads. Practically half of that amount, 12 millionwill be allocated exclusively to works on seven destroyed or damaged bridges in municipalities such as Ribarroja and Cheste.
The President of the Government himself, Pedro Sánchez, who yesterday went to the Valencia emergency center and met with the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, announced that he will declare the catastrophic zone in the municipalities affected by DANA to try to speed up the arrival of funds and actions. Both the Valencian employers CEV as CCOO and UGT requested this measure, so that companies and workers can benefit from ERTEs of force majeurealthough they also pointed out that additional aid will be necessary
Powers, alerts and help to the army
The differences between the Generalitat of Carlos Mazón and the central government once again became evident despite the fact that after the meeting that the PP baron had with Pedro Sánchez, he thanked him for having traveled to Valencia and for the collaboration. Before that meeting, the Ministry of the Interior sent a statement in which it recalled “that the management of territorial Civil Protection plans is the responsibility of the CCAA”, after the controversy over when Valencians were alerted and the level of alarm was raised.
Hours after that meeting, Mazón requested the help of the “available personnel” of the Army to distribute aid to those affected in the towns located south of the Valencian capital, where the lack of supplies in the next few hours could be critical and where many affected people had expressed their criticism of the lack of foreign aid in these two previous days.
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