Ribera defends his management against the dana, “always under the exclusive command” of the Generalitat

The Third Vice President of the Government of Spain, Teresa Riberaheld the Valencian Generalitat responsible this Wednesday for the management of the dana, denying that there was an information blackout by Aemet and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation and emphasizing that these organizations always acted under the exclusive command of the regional government.

During his appearance in the Congress of Deputies to report on the management of his ministry in this episode, he considered that the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) generated “adequate warnings and information” in reference to the dana that devastated Valencia operating “before, during the 29th and after” under the exclusive command of the Valencian Generalitat.

Ribera began his speech by expressing his condolences to the victims: “From the pain that I feel, that we all feel,” he said, and gave a detailed chronology of events, recalling that action on the ground was the responsibility of the regional administration. .

In this sense, he insisted that the law generates two powers for the central administration: to generate alerts and to provide support to the sole command on the emergency, which, he confirms, has been fulfilled, while “the regional services for civil protection are responsible for contacting municipal councils, issuing warnings and adopting measures to protect the population”.

An exceptional phenomenon

Ribera has insisted that “there has never been an information blackout,” because notices like Aemet’s are in fact “the most important thing to minimize the damage” and “the degree of impact depends on how you respond to an red notice”. the population over time.

However, the October 29 dana was of an “exceptional” character as “only 1 in 400 rain warnings in the past five years has been red”, and in this case it “differs from what the maps previously considered to be a high or medium possibility – with a return of 100 years – or low – with a return of 500 -“.

All this, in a panorama with ‘extraordinary’ rainfall with a rain intensity of 184.6 liters per square meter only in the city of Turís, a historical record in the stations of the Aemet network, where ‘more water collected in three hours then it is usually collected in one year.

New reality

Ribera has stressed that Spain is “faced with a new hydrological reality, characterized by extremes” related to the increase in droughts and floods, with a “very worrying” climate scenario according to data provided in recent months by various institutions and which improves will force preparation for climate change. future incidents.

For example, he recalled that the global temperature between January and September 2024 was 1.54 degrees above the pre-industrial average, that the Mediterranean will become more than 20% warmer than the rest of the oceans and seas, or that the forecasts for the 2020s are expected to be the warmest on record, all of which ‘urges for ambitious and effective climate action’.