The argument to president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, of his management of the crisis on the day of the dana – he arrived two hours late to the meeting of the Cecopi, the emergency coordination body, after a meal with a journalist, and activated the alert to the 20:11— focus on the notices sent by email by the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) to the Generalitat. The popular ones and Mazón himself, who is expected to defend this management this Friday during his appearance in the Valencian Cortes, accuse the body dependent on the Ministry of Ecological Transition of “negligence” for not having sent any communication regarding said boulevard between 4:13 p.m. 18.43. However, in that time slot there were more emails. These did not refer to the flow, but to the intense rains that fell on the municipality of Chiva, located at the head of the Poyo ravine, as this newspaper has advanced and confirmed, which has accessed all the emails exchanged on October 29 .
Specifically, the CHJ, through its Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH), sent two emails to the Emergency Coordination Center of the Valencian Community. The first, at 4:37 p.m.: the Confederation reports that at 4:26 p.m. there is “Alarm in Chiva (Chiva-Valencia) of calculated rain intensity accumulated rain during the last hour: 36.60 liters per square meter greater than 30.00.” The second, at 4:50 p.m., is practically copied, although the rain is getting worse: at 4:46 p.m., emergency receives a second email: “Alarm in Chiva (Chiva-Valencia) of calculated rain intensity accumulated rain during the last four hours: 54.40 liters per square meter greater than 50.00″. Both communications contradict the information blackout alleged by the PP to accuse the minister of the sector, Teresa Ribera,
Both emails are part of a long list of more than 190 emails, as the newspaper has announced. The Levant. According to the documentation accessed by this newspaper, these emails were sent by the CHJ to service 112 of the Generalitat Valenciana from 4:35 a.m. to 10:58 p.m. on October 29. In these emails, different points in the province are mentioned with warnings about changes in flow or rainfall.
Leaving aside the rain warnings, and focusing attention on the flows, the Hydrographic Confederation carries out measurements with sensors or observations to detect the flooding of the channels in real time. At 12:07 on Tuesday the 29th, this organization sent the first email to the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat in which it warned that the three alarm thresholds – 1, 2 and 3 – had been exceeded on Rambla del Poyo. With this information, the Emergency Coordination Center activated the “hydrological alert in the riverside municipalities of the rambla.” Throughout the day, the Confederation sent five emails referring to the flow of the Poyo to the regional Emergency Center. At 1:42 p.m., 3:04 p.m., and 4:13 p.m., the emails reported that the flow in the riverbed was decreasing. In the last one, at 6:43 p.m., it warned that it was rising and was already out of control, because at that time the flow was more than 11 times above what is established as warning threshold 3 in the protocols of the CHJ. The email said that “the flood is being very fast.” The general notification to the Generalitat’s Emergency mobile phones arrived at 8:11 p.m. Between 4:13 p.m. and 6:43 p.m. the technicians were focused on the situation at the Forata reservoir, given the risk of that dam breaking.
Regarding the flow, from 150 m³/s the CHJ protocol indicates that the Generalitat must be warned through emails, indicate sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Although these sources highlight that the information on the flows is open on the confederation’s website and is automatically updated every five minutes.
In any case, as this newspaper reported, the Confederation justified not having reported on the flow of the Poyo between 4:13 p.m. and 6:43 p.m. as follows: “We insist that the CHJ deals according to the GVA Special Flood Plan [Generalitat] of hydrological information on large rivers and everything related to the application of dam emergency plans, which is why at that time the confederation technicians were focused on these matters. In any case, at the end of the second meeting of Cecopi [tras un receso]At 6:30 p.m., the instantaneous flooding of the ravine was detected and the corresponding warning was sent, as established by the GVA’s Special Flood Plan. However, it appears that the Emergency Coordination Center did nothing with that information.”
