Devastating floods in Spain, which killed more than 220 people, provided a stark warning of how official mistakes can lead to the failure of disaster alert systems in an age of hard-to-predict disasters.

While the reckoning regarding mismanagement continues October disasterCriticism is pouring in on the Valencia regional government for failing to send an emergency alert to mobile phones by 8pm on the first day – nearly 13 hours after the state weather agency had warned of “very heavy” rain.

Much of the survivors’ anger was directed at Carlos Mazón, the conservative head of the regional government. On the day of the flood, he had a three-hour lunch with a female journalist; This did not end until 6pm, when some towns and villages were flooded and the first reports of missing persons arrived, according to local media reports.

Over the weekend, 130,000 people protested in the streets of the capital of Valencia, calling for Mazón’s resignation. Some banners read: “Our hands are stained with mud, theirs are stained with blood.”

But beyond alleged individual failings, Spain’s trauma also holds lessons for other countries, disaster experts say. around the MediterraneanA place where climate change creates new threats that are as dangerous as they are difficult to predict.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Tuesday at the COP29 summit in Baku that he wanted to “say loud and clear that climate change kills.”

Jesús Lluch Ferrer, director general of BUSF, a firefighters’ NGO specializing in disaster relief, said the state weather agency Aemet did its job by sending out technical warnings that culminated in the most serious “red” warning at 7.36am on the day of the disaster. floods.

“But the flow of information, and especially the response to that flow of information, was not sufficient,” he said. “Technicians can inform and warn, but they are not the executive body. They can’t tell people to stay at home. “They can’t tell companies to close their doors.”

Even before the Valencia flood, examples of inadequate warning systems were accumulating.

Following the 2021 floods that killed more than 200 people in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, an assessment by the UN University stated that “it is important to improve the dissemination and understanding of early warning messages.” An official analysis after 102 people died in Hawaii wildfires in 2023 said “inadequate or ineffective warnings” contributed to the figure.

The UN has set the goal of including the entire world in nationally run early warning systems by the end of 2027. Kamal Kishore, head of the UN’s disaster risk reduction arm, said “great progress” had been made in warning systems. over the last 10 years but were still “nowhere near where they needed to be”.

Responsibility for alerts is often shared between different agencies, making coordination crucial. A blame game has begun in Spain, where institutions are controlled by political parties locked in a permanent feud.

As the regions lead disaster response in Spain, the Socialist-led central government said the Mazón administration, led by the Popular Party (PP), bore responsibility for not turning on mobile phones with timely warning.

Mazón resumed his regular schedule on the morning of October 29, appearing in a video on social media platform Spanish Environment Minister Teresa Ribera said earlier in the evening it was clear that Valencia “did not make the right decisions”.

PP officials are trying to point the finger at Ribera, who is likely to be the top Socialist in the new European Commission. Ribera’s ministry is responsible for Aemet as well as a public agency that monitors the level of waterways; PP said this was not enough to raise the alarm about the risk of bursting river beds.

Education is also an issue. Experts said the slow response indicated a limited understanding of severe weather among some decision-makers, who struggled to assess the extent of the threat and decide what to do.

The job of assessing the vulnerability of people and property often falls to civil servants who rotate between different departments and lack the necessary expertise, said Vicky Palma, a disaster response consultant working with the Canary Islands government.

“You need meteorologists in the civil protection department, people who understand what’s going on and can translate scientific information for others,” he said.

Every region of Spain can send emergency alerts to all mobile phone users in the disaster area after an EU directive requires member states to install the necessary systems by 2022.

But the head of Valencia’s emergency service, Salomé Pradas, told television channel À Punt last week that she did not learn that it was possible to send such warnings until the evening of the first day of the flood. He later retracted this statement.

“There will eventually come a time when every administration will review its performance,” Mazón said on Monday. “I think we need to accept that mistakes were made.”

But he tried to downplay the importance of the long lunch. He said he was in contact with his colleagues by phone and that there was no need for him to be present at the emergency committee’s important meeting, which started at 17:00. Mazon said “everything changed” by around 7 p.m., after the water authority reported a rapid increase in the level of waterways.

The University of Valencia, about 20 municipal councils and dozens of schools closed, along with other institutions, took action hours ago following phone calls and media reports about the Aemet warning, a central government official said.

Even if people are aware of a threat, warnings don’t work unless they are trained on how to respond, experts say. “People often don’t know how to act in certain emergencies,” said Alba Barrado, a consultant who works on disaster plans for municipalities in Valencia.

Tragic evidence came in Valencia where people tried to move their vehicles out of basement car parks for fear of flooding, but drowned after being caught by underground flooding.

“When I talk to people about natural hazards, they often say ‘no, not here,’ or ‘how can it be so dramatic?'” Barrado said. “I take the stand,” he said. “Unfortunately, it happens sometimes.”

Additional reporting by Carmen Muela in Madrid

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