A civil engineer, a technician supporting the management of the operation of the Buseo dam, the only property of the Generalitat, told Judge Dana that he had warned the Generalitat and the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ) that the dam was going to overflow. He did this via a first email at 8:41 p.m.
However, the Emergency Center of the Generalitat, where the Cecopi which manages the floods met, informed and the regional government did not increase the maximum emergency level until the next day. A father and son died that night in Sot de Chera, the first town downstream of the dam, directly because of its overflow. The Minister of Agriculture, Miguel Barrachina, stressed last Friday that the CHJ was responsible for managing the emergency of the dam, the management of which is privatized.
The engineer testified this Tuesday as a witness before the Catarroja court which is investigating the management of the flood, a procedure in which two people are instructed: the former Minister of Justice and Interior Salomé Pradas and his former number two Emilio Argüeso.
The witness, cited for sending several emails on the day of the damage linked to the Buseo dam – which overflowed the night of the emergency and affected several Valencian municipalities – explained that he worked for a company that operated the dam, as a support technician, and indicated that the installation had “insufficient” capacity and sewers that had been “ruined” for a long time.
The engineer reported that after sending the email he went to the dam but could not pass because there was a stream crossing the road and a man warned him that there was a landslide next to the hydroelectric plant and it was impossible to access it, so he returned to Valencia.
The technician tried to communicate with Pedro Rivas, director of operations of the dam, and arrived at his home around 10:50 p.m. At 11:03 p.m. he sent an email warning that the dam was about to overflow, that it was possible that it would sink because of the overflow and that he could not contact operators, and at 11:36 p.m. he called 112 to inform them of the situation at the dam, near the municipality of Sot de Chera, where two people died that night.
The last data from the Buseo sensor, he said, was after 10 p.m. and it stopped sending information because the current carried it away. The engineer explained that the municipality of Sot de Chera is close to the dam and that there are houses in the bed of the river itself, in the area known as “the island”, according to Efe.
When the water overflowed, he explained, there was a hole on the right bank and on the left bank before the spillway, so it came out there first.
The dam overflowed due to its crest and the water fell on the bed of the Reatillo river, affecting Sot de Chera, then Vilamarxant, Bugarra and Pedralba and the following municipalities until reaching the sea.
The Buseo dam, the sole property of the Generalitat Valenciana, had three of its four retaining drains blocked and its emergency plan was not operational. The water overflowed at crown level, reaching a height of two and a half meters above the retaining wall. The dam was built between 1903 and 1915.
About The Author
