The 112 emergency service of the Basque Country responded to 32 telephone requests for help on October 29 and 30, 2024 related to the province of Valencia and learned of the existence of at least two fatalities at 9:05 p.m. that day, according to a report sent to the Investigative Court 3 of Catarroja, which is investigating the management of the emergency.
In his appearance on November 17 in the Congress of Deputies, Carlos Mazón, then acting president of the Generalitat, assured that on the afternoon of the dana “no one knew that people were drowning”, that is why he accompanied the journalist Maribel Vilaplana to the parking lot after an almost four-hour meal at the El Ventorro restaurant, which began around 3 p.m.
He also stated then that “there was no knowledge of the first loss of human life until well into the early hours of the morning,” around five o’clock, a statement refuted by various information and messages. The Presidency stressed that Mazón was referring to official, verified, and not unofficial knowledge.
In a whatsapp sent by the Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, to Mazón’s chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, informing him at 4:28 p.m. there was at least one death in Utiel. Mazón resigned on November 3. When the Cecopi (Integrated Operational Coordination Center) started at 5:00 p.m., a dozen people had already died. And at least 56 when the then president finished his meal, according to the analysis of the case summary carried out by EL PAÍS.
The 112-Euskadi report, to which this newspaper has had access, is signed by the director of Emergency Assistance and Meteorology, Joseba Zorrilla. The investigating judge of Catarroja asked the Basque Government for a report regarding the calls received on 112 in Euskadi by referral from 112 in the Valencian Community on that tragic day, which resulted in 230 fatalities.
In the response, the Basque Government gives details of each of the calls that were received between 6:15 p.m. on October 29, when a man residing in Bilbao called to say that his wife was in a chalet in Picassent that was flooding, and 5:18 p.m. on the 30th, when a person called from Ispaster (Vizcaya) because he could not contact his daughter in the Valencian Community.
In the first moments of the floods, a woman called from Zegama (Guipúzcoa) at 8:26 p.m. to report that a friend of hers who worked as a caregiver in Catarroja had not been able to lift a dependent person she was caring for up the stairs and that she had drowned.
The next death reported by the technicians who attended 112 in the Basque Country was at 9:05 p.m., when a caller speaking from Vitoria reported the death of a person in an industrial warehouse in Loriguilla. Most of the communications correspond to people who have relatives or friends in the Valencian Community who are in trouble or missing.
The Basque Government report details that in many cases it was impossible to transfer calls to the emergency services of the Valencian Community, nor to 112, nor to the Civil Guard or the local police of the municipalities affected by the floods.
