Fury grows over bungled Valencia floods response

Luke James

A red weather warning had been issued and emergency services in Valencia had already begun rescuing people trapped in their cars and homes when the region’s president, Carlos Mazón, told a press conference on Tuesday lunchtime that the weather would improve by the evening.

Instead, by 3.20pm, the flash flooding caused by the DANA weather system was causing destruction across inland Valencia and, by 7.10pm, flooding had reached areas where it hadn’t rained heavily.

When the Valencian government’s civil protection agency finally sent out its first warning to people’s mobile phones at 8.15pm, it was already too late.

Almost a year’s rain had fallen during a single day in one town. The death toll currently stands at 214 people. Another 1,900 people are reported missing.

“I was speaking with a friend of mine and he told me ‘I was at the top of a tree when I received the alarm’,” Vicent Marzà, a Valencian member of the European Parliament, told Nation.Cymru. “He was on top of his car and then he had to climb the tree.”

“People were in the cinema, in schools, in factories,” he added. “The floods arrived and people were not prepared for it and that’s why there were so many deaths.

“The government didn’t want to stop the economy. But the economy should not come before people’s lives.”

Trapped

The lack of government guidance meant many people were told they had to stay at work. When it became too dangerous to leave, many were trapped in their workplaces overnight and some were forced to climb onto the roofs of warehouses.

Others were allowed to leave too late, leading to people being trapped in their cars by rapidly rising waters. One video showed how traffic jams formed at around 7.20 before cars were under water 30 minutes later.

Com pot canviar la història en uns minuts. pic.twitter.com/zmqRyPtCRJ

— Anna Manyé (@annamanye) October 31, 2024

In the city of Valencia, the council didn’t announce the closure of schools until 9.20pm.

“They knew about this at 7.30 in the morning and they alerted people after 8 in the evening when everyone was on their way home and that’s why they got caught in the floods,” said Gwenan Iolo, a 30-year-old from Cardiff who lives in Valencia.

“The worst of it is that we’ve got underground tunnels which go from village to village, or underneath main streets, and they’re full of cars and these cars are full of bodies.

“They’re just now starting to bring them out. The death toll is going to rise a lot. There are still people living with bodies in their houses. I don’t even have words to describe how bad it is. It’s catastrophic.”

Iolo, as well as the rest of her team at a software company, were working from home on Tuesday and Valencia city centre, where she lives, has been spared the flooding which has devastated the city’s southern suburbs.

“But I have friends who have lost everything,” she added. “Their families have lost their houses.
I would say about 90 per cent of my friends have lost something or been affected by it.”

Volunteers

The response was largely being led by thousands of volunteers until yesterday when the army was deployed across much of Valencia.

There is frustration with the central government, led by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, for what is seen as a delayed deployment.

“People felt that they were alone,” said Marzà. “People were coming to help them and they were really happy to have this help but they were crying out for professional help. It arrived really late.”

But people’s anger is primarily channeled towards regional president Carlos Mazón of the Partido Popular, the Spanish conservative party which has governed with the support of far-right Vox since last year.

People threw mud and chanted “assassin” as he walked through Paiporta, one of the worst affected towns south of the city of Valencia, with the king of Spain today.

Crits, insults i llançament de fang contra el rei, Mazón i el govern a Paiporta https://t.co/SpGp2K719c #DanaPaísValencià3Cat pic.twitter.com/25QI3TXt5d

— 324.cat (@324cat) November 3, 2024

Not only is he blamed for the late warning, but he has been criticised for accepting a sustainable tourism award as the disaster unfolded, subsequently telling volunteers to go home, and turning down offers of assistance from Catalan and French firefighters.

Abandoned

Even local mayors of his own party have said publicly they feel “completely abandoned.”

A year ago this month, Mazón’s government also scrapped the Valencia’s emergency response unit that had been established by the previous left-wing government to deal with growing threat from climate change.

Climate change made the rainfall experienced by Valencia this week 12% heavier than would have been expected in similar DANA related downpours in the pre-industrial era, according to scientists from World Weather Attribution, which studies the link between climate change and weather patterns.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean sea was key to making the effects of DANA, a collision between warm air and cold fronts collide, more severe.

“Nobody understands why they would destroy an emergency agency that could be helping at the moment,” said Marzà, who was a minister in the last Valencian government which established the agency.

“This was one of Vox’s biggest demands for supporting the conservatives. The president from the conservatives agreed and just before summer he said this agency was just a place for people to have salaries without working.

“They are against adaptation to climate change. You can see the effect here very clearly.”

A demonstration calling for the resignation of Mazón has been called for November 9.

In the short-term, his fortunes depend on Vox, which have so far directed their fire at Sanchez’s socialists in Madrid rather than the actions of the Valencian government.

Gwenan Iolo believes “there’s going to be hell to pay when they clean everything and get the bodies to their families and buried, and get everything back to the beginning of a semblance of normality.”

Support

In the meantime, she will be among the thousands of volunteers continuing to provide support to survivors across Valencia who have been without electricity, water and gas for days.

“Everyone I know has been helping,” she said after volunteering yesterday. “There are people going from village, walking or on bikes, taking water, taking food, or things to clean with.

“We were buying supplies and taking them to collection points in the south side of Valencia so people can take them to the villages. Tomorrow the plan is to go ourselves. The furthest village we’re looking into going to is an hour and a half walk.”

With the death toll expected to keep rising as emergency services clear tunnels containing dozens of cars, Iolo described the scene as “apocalyptic.”

“I don’t even have words for how bad it is,” she said. “People are cleaning around cars knowing that there’s bodies in them.”

Valencians UK has set up a disaster appeal here.