Catastrophes and incompetence in Spain

 Not a well-documented carefully-written piece, but a stream of rage-filled thoughts, written in frustration and impotence at what we've seen this week.

Tuesday's (29/10/2024) rainfall and flash floods in the Valencia region were horrendous. But foreseen; with accurate data and warnings from the weather service published throughout the day. Knowing how much water had fallen in the mountains upstream, they had a very close idea of how much water would flow through the (normally dry) ravines that towns have been built around and what height the water would reach as it raged through streets and homes. It was going to be a nightmare and called for immediate action.

Local authorities (the Valencian autonomous government) failed to act; they failed to emit a warning from the government in time for people to go home or stay indoors which would have allowed/forced shops and factories to close, and people to realize the seriousness of what was about to happen in a question of hours. They sent the warning too late, when the floods had already hit most places and hundreds of people had probably already been washed away or were trapped in places where they had little chance of survival. Yes, this level of rainfall and flooding surely meant chaos and deaths whatever, but on what scale? Perhaps, with the correct warnings and emergency measures that 21st century technology and up-to-the-minute scientific data offer, we could have been looking at a dozen dead if we compare to similar cases around Europe? Who knows. Now, we're looking at hundreds. At least.

Throughout the night Tues-Wed, the scale of the catastrophe was becoming clear even for those of us just following social media. Hundreds of cries for help from people trapped, injured, up trees, on car roofs, with the water (and bodies) raging past, people who'd been unable to hold on to their loved ones, people trapped in underground areas filling up with water and so on. Cries for help on social media as the emergency telephone lines were completely overrun.

The post-flood response by politicians has also been hopeless; too slow and too little. By daybreak Wednesday they must have been able to appreciate the magnitude of the tragedy, and the amount of immediate work needed. There should have been helicopters (military and emergency services) in action and hundreds of rescuers on the ground, and asap, calls for thousands of Spain's hardly-used military troops to come and start the clear-up. But no.

Just yesterday, Saturday, 4 days later, there were still people without food, water, medicine or a roof over their head. People who still hadn't seen Spanish emergency services in their town or the famous arrival of troops. People literally still trapped in their homes as they have 3 feet of mud and a heap of wrecked cars piled up against their house. And we're talking about towns 10 or 20 km from the third biggest city in Spain, not trying to reach the crashed plane in Alive!

Major health problems in the making too with contaminated water everywhere - sewage, petrol, chemicals, dead bodies decomposing.

Dead bodies are still to be found and recovered from piles of cars, basements, ground floor buildings, underpasses, underground carparks... The death toll is currently over 250 but the fears are it could be many, many more. For this reason, perhaps the local govt refused to offer any new data yesterday, for fear of people's reactions if we know the true numbers?

No attempt (at least that we know of) to provide centres in every affected town offering psychological help and support for survivors and relatives of victims/the missing.

Restrictions on the tens of thousands of volunteers who've marched from Valencia city to help every day. Supposedly because they might get in the way. In the way of what, if there's sod all happening in many places? Or perhaps the restrictions are to try and cut off the flow of videos and photos showing just how dramatic the catastrophe is?

Next will come the inevitable cover-up of the mistakes and negligence, alongside political blame-passing on a scale never seen before.

Then will come the phase that those who think they'll avoid jail (or Hell) are waiting for: sharing out the aid and recovery funds. Remember the earthquake in 1980 near Naples (as mentioned in Ferrante's My Beautiful Friend book)? Of the 40 billion which was supposed to help, it sounds like (wikipedia) only about 1/4 of the money, 9 billion, was actually used for real aid and victims; the rest was pocketed by corruption*

>Footnote: regarding the Valencian government's politician "in charge" of emergency services; all we know of his agenda for Tuesday (with weather services offering constant warnings) is he had a 'working lunch' with a bull-fighting association. Nothing was heard of him then till on Thursday when he tweeted a photo saying he'd been straight into work at 11 am (sic) on Wednesday to deal with the emergency.

  [*we'll leave for another day the levels of corruption, bribery and ignorance which led to the decades of barely-regulated urban planning behind this disaster]