BarcelonaManel Pardo (Barcelona, 1967) is one of the people most familiar with the management of emergency services in Catalonia. He has been director of Civil Protection, director of the Barcelona Fire Department and director of the Prevention, Fire Extinguishing and Rescue Service. He is now part of the Cabinet of Security and Transversal Policies of the Department of the Interior.
The question is obligatory: to what extent could the magnitude of the tragedy in the Valencian Country have been avoided or reduced?
– You can always. You always have the warnings and everything depends on you reducing the reaction time to the minimum. But for this you need to have worked long before doing prevention and getting the municipalities to know how to protect themselves by intuition. It is clear that nothing has been done in the necessary and sufficient time from the Valencian government area. The emergency will always catch you, but if you have applied measures you can reduce the human risk as much as possible. However, the impact on the territory, on buildings and cars would have been more or less the same.
Talk about reaction time. In the Valencian CountryThe State Meteorological Agency had warned on Sunday that torrential rain could occur on Tuesday and it is not until Tuesday evening that the SMS alert is sent to the population. What should have been the appropriate tempos?
— It all depends on how you believe the weather predictions and what risk you want to take on the possibility that they will come true or not. You have to have experts tell you “shoot this way or shoot that way”. Anyway, given the predictions, you have to have everything ready 12 hours before the time the predictions tell you the phenomenon will occur. In Valencia everything should have been done 12 hours earlier.
You must be clear that the notices are for before and make a decision. If you’re afraid of making mistakes, quit your job. It’s an unpresentable situation”
Would a mid-afternoon appearance or warning or a restraining order have made much of a difference in the human toll?
— It is not a matter of issuing a warning so that people can confine themselves, but of an alert to act, but for this you must know where the floods will come and pass. If you know the impact they can have in each municipality, you can block streets and people can block doors. It’s true that the water would pass anyway, but at least there wouldn’t be people or cars at those points. Valencia certainly has a flood plan with these details, but the first Civil Protection authority that must activate the alert is the government of the Generalitat Valenciana. He is most responsible for this. The management can be totally improved, because it is clear that the Valencian government sends the alert when it already knows that there are deaths. You must be clear that the notices are for before. You have to make a decision and if you are afraid of making a mistake, leave the job. It is an unpresentable situation.
The number of fatalities is very high, but we continue with a provisional balance sheet. Do you think it can grow much more?
— I have no elements to calculate this with certainty, but seeing the images it is clear that it will be long and that there will be many people who will not find it. There will be dead people buried three or four meters under the mud and bodies will also be found in the sea. We will be looking for people for a week or ten days and then the missing persons regulations will be activated.
Beyond the times to warn, what security measures do you think have been lacking to prevent a tragedy like this?
— Investment. Investment in time, in drills, in pedagogy, in explaining to the councils what they have to do… And, if you build in a flood zone, having ways to adapt to the risk by raising the houses or having methods to be able to regulate the water In Barcelona, for example, it was done years ago: faced with the problem of flooding, they created 17 underground river reservoirs, which are immense. It is a system that collects water and remains stagnant there, and what it does is that the coming of water is coming more slowly.
Less than a year ago, the government of Carlos Mazón abolished the Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE). Was it a mistake?
– Absolutely.
What does a unit like this do?
— It is the gray substance that thinks and associates operatives and the different bodies and emergency services. In other words, all emergency systems have people who do various functions, but everything has to work from a set. If the UVE really had this function that they said of bringing together all the forces and doing comprehensive management of the emergency, for me it was an essential unit.
I don’t know what they have done in the Valencian Country, but it seems they haven’t talked to anyone”
Now the ball of who should have made decisions is passing between the Valencian government and the Spanish government. In these situations, does the coordination between administrations work?
— Coordination is good, but it depends on each case and each government. The regulations state that when you enter emergency 2, the responsibility must pass to the State, but clearly, for this you must comply with the protocols and above all know what is happening. There was a mismanagement of interpretation of what was happening. Maybe because they had no information. But if you cannot know what is happening in your territory, you cannot govern. Pick up the phone and call the mayor, talk to whoever, meet with the regional centers. I don’t know what they have done in the Valencian Country, but it seems that they have not spoken to anyone.
Beyond prevention, once the tragedy is a reality and you have missing, trapped, injured, dead and the floods still sweeping everything, as emergency services where do you start? What is prioritized?
— First, people’s lives, the most complicated situations. In other words, if one has a flooded house but is fine, the number 1 priority will be to go and save the one whose life is in danger.
But in a situation where the number of people whose lives are in danger is so high, how do you decide who to try to help first?
— It is a technical subject that combines gravity with chronological order. If I have two people in a similar situation and one called me at 11 and the other at 11:03, you’ll focus on the first. In addition, 112 collects the information and passes it on to the Fire Department. There, a technical team sorts the list based on the severity of the situation.
We have seen many images on the networks of trapped people calling for help at a time when it was impossible for the emergency services to reach everything. What do you say to the person who calls 112 when it is known that they cannot go to save them?
— That you will go and look for him. You have to tell everyone you’re going to get it, even if you know you can’t at the time. Even if you’re more than 12 hours late, you’ll go get him, you can’t leave him. In addition, you must try to get as much information as possible from that person, ask him how he is, if he has any problems in life… and give him directions to try to get him to a place as safe as possible .
The problem is that we all know that then the aid money takes years to arrive”
On Tuesday night, the Valencian president appears to say that “there are bodies”, but he does not give any specific figures. Is this better than not giving a number even if it is provisional?
– Yes. I wouldn’t say the number until I had it locked. My role is to monitor the entire emergency situation and also all the information that comes out. If I tell you there are 103 victims and in the end there are only 96, what will you tell me? You will explain when you have the number confirmed and closed.
We talked about how to save lives, but then what? How do you manage the mud, the wreckage, the thousands of cars piled up…?
— This is a very hard task. very hard And here you do have to count on the solidarity of the people who can come to help. Especially with the most unpleasant work, which is removing mud and untangling. This is a task for which there are never enough hands.
And the Administration?
— Well, resources must be put in there and disaster zone declarations must be made. They have to make the right investment. The problem is that we all know that later this money takes years to arrive.
We continue with the world’s contradiction between what is right and what we do”
All over the State there are many houses built in flood zones. In Catalonia there are almost 300 municipalities at risk of flooding that do not have the mandatory civil protection plan. Are we taking action?
— If I told you I wouldn’t be lying, because meetings are held and talked about. One of the problems, however, is that each body and each institution has a different criterion on how far infrastructure can be built and expanded or where infrastructure must be removed. An example can be found in the Llera del Segre. All the campsites in the Segre are absolutely floodable. And they are seasonal campsites. For more than 15 years they have been trying to have a system of warnings and sensors so that when there is a flood they know and people have enough time to grab things and get to a safe place. This has been impossible and these campsites have not closed. I mean… Are things done? Yes, but from my point of view they are not enough.
These days many remember three major storms that the Valencian Country has suffered in the last seventy years. Do you think we haven’t learned?
— In 2018 there was a flood in Menorca. 11 people died, including a 5-year-old boy. What has happened since then? What has changed since then? nothing Nothing has changed. And in 30 or 40 years, the same thing will happen again. It’s terrible management, because you’re dealing with so many interests. Doing things right is expensive. We continue with the world’s contradiction between what is right and what we do.
