“At five o’clock in the afternoon they were sentenced to death”

The engineer of Roads, Canals and Ports Teodoro Velázquez maintained that the risks of this tragic day were “totally predictable” and pointed out as one of the causes of the devastation and loss of human life the lack of execution of hydraulic works, such as the construction of dams or pipeline actions, and of an early warning system.

“At five o’clock in the afternoon people were sentenced to death, at six o’clock, at seven o’clock and at eight o’clock”said during his appearance in which he asked to “correct the mistakes made” by not carrying out the measures and infrastructure planned for years to prevent flooding.

According to him, it is “very clear” that the main cause of the extent of the damage caused by the damage was the failure to carry out or “not even address” the planned structural measures. Furthermore, he stressed that the early warning system is “the only way to save the population” and explained that the current Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH) is not.

“Having the data on the passage of 1,500 m3/s is of no use to me, this data only gets where it needs to go with the speed at which the water arrives 20 minutes later,” he said, stressing that early warning systems “are still necessary”, while warning against the need to implement measures such as channeling or building dams, which are “the only salvation for people”.

“With the information available, the early warning could have been given at nine o’clock in the morning, because At 7:36 a.m. there was data: 180 l/m2. Armed with this information, the CHJ and the Ministry, which are responsible for the direct management of the public hydraulic domain, knew, thanks to the flood hazard and risk maps, that a flood could occur as the 500-year return period approached. This meant 128 square kilometers of flooding in the Bajo Turia area, with a water level four meters high,” he said.

So it was a “totally predictable” risk and with “the knowledge that the CHJ and the Ministry had, this information should have been planned, but at 9 a.m., not at 7 p.m. or 5 p.m. At 7:36 a.m. this information was available. If I am the President of the Confederation or the Secretary of State, knowing the knowledge that we have of the basins and the danger maps, it is clear that what happened is going to happen.

And regarding the powers of the measures, he indicated that they are all provided for in the National Hydrological Plan and that hydraulic works “are always the responsibility of the General Administration of the State and must be carried out by the competent service for managing the public hydraulic domain, which is the Ministry of Ecological Transition”.

That said, he assured that it is “clear” that the structural measures “have not been carried out” and criticized the fact that the ministry’s policy consists of carrying out “only or as a priority” green infrastructure in certain areas, which, in his opinion, is “a scandal” for those who are in extreme flood risk because they are “absolutely insufficient”.

He also pointed to the responsibility for the “totally erroneous” file of the environmental adaptation project of the Poyo ravine basin towards Albufera due to “theoretical incompatibilities” with the Huerta Law, a rule which proved “disastrous” for the execution of the works. “And the ministry says it, I don’t say it,” he stressed.

And regarding the solutions, he called for “compliance with current legislation” and the Flood Risk Management Plan “developed in 2016”, as well as to recover the archived project for environmental adaptation of the Poyo basin and to carry out “urgently and jointly” all the works planned for Poyo, Saleta, Pozalet, Gallego, the Vilamarxant dam and the conditioning of the Turia. “It should be done now, we have been here for a year and nothing has started,” he lamented.

Cecopi “needs to be updated”

For his part, the professor of civil law at the University of Valencia, Francisco Javier Orduña, highlighted the “dysfunctions” that arise during emergency situations like that of Dana, due to the absence of a civil protection text that “coordinates all areas” of action and powers and defended the need to approve “framework legislation from the point of view of the State and the region.”

Furthermore, he stated that Cecopi “needs to be updated” because on the night of the dana, it presented itself as a meeting “without real information, without prepared technological means and without an action protocol which says who must decide, who must not decide”.

The former Supreme Court judge stressed that the floods constitute “a case of civil liability so serious” that “it seems imprudent to immediately exclude the competition of responsibilities” between regional and central administrations. “The extent of joint and several liability will have to be analyzed; no result can be anticipated,” he commented.

Gardens Act

For his part, urban architect Alejandro Escribano criticized the fact that the greenway project connecting the Poyo ravine to the bed of the Turia river has not been carried out for years. “If the greenway had been built, my niece would be alive,” he noted, while adding that she too “would be alive if she had received” the ES-Alert message earlier.

He defended that the greenway could have absorbed 1,500 cubic meters per second of the approximately 2,500 people who arrived. “You don’t have to be an expert to understand that the difference between two meters of water and one meter of water is the difference between living or dying, it’s the difference between ending up in a dry cleaner cleaning clothes or ending up in a funeral home,” he stressed.

Furthermore, he pointed out that “the drop in the level would probably have been enough for the survival of a young and athletic person” like his niece, “because having a meter and a half or two of water is not the same as having a meter of water.”

Regarding the reason why the works were not carried out, he indicated that the reason is “that they were not provided for in the budget and because problems of delays in environmental assessments were raised”. At this point, he explained that the Horta Law “requires avoiding fragmentation and degradation of the elements that make up the orchard” and, in general, establishes conditions that “are impossible to meet when it comes to making in its lower part a channel with a width of between 30 and 40 meters, and in its crown, of approximately 80 meters”.

“It is absolutely unthinkable that an appeal against a project so contrary to what the law says could emerge from a court unscathed,” he commented. Likewise, he added that the Territorial Action Plan for Development and Dynamization developed by the Garden Law is also “impossible to respect”.

“I believe that what happened is simply that the Huerta Territorial Action Plan voluntarily forgot, and I have no doubt about it, that is to say that those who developed the Huerta Plan knew perfectly well that there were hydraulic infrastructures and They thought it was better to use risk minimization mechanisms “like flood-prone areas, like riverine forests and other things,” which, in his opinion, cannot prevent the October 29 flood, he lamented.

Escribano advocated the professionalization of emergency intervention and assured that at the head of Cecopi “there should have been a professional.”

According to him, “there should not be political leaders in charge of the organizations of human life”, and an example of this is the management of the fire of the Notre Dame Cathedral, while he asked “how is it possible that the Valencian Community does not have a system for monitoring the beds of the rivers”, when it is “the greatest risk that we run as a population”. “Clearly it failed,” he said.

Finally, the director of the Center for Research and Projects, Innovation and Sustainability, Miguel Ángel Artacho, assured that climate change was among the causes that caused the damage, since this phenomenon is at the origin of the increase in the intensity and frequency of floods. As a “second cause,” he cited population growth and urbanization.

Also this Monday, the four parties represented in the Valencian Cortes (PP, PSPV, Compromís and Vox) approved a request from the latter formation to expand the work plan of the commission of inquiry to include appearances by the Minister of Agriculture, Water, Livestock and Fisheries, Miguel Barrachinaand two officials from the Buseo Dam, an infrastructure belonging to the Generalitat which was seriously damaged by the flood.