BarcelonaThe weather warning by the DANA has generated uncertainty and contradictory orders in educational centers in Catalonia this Monday. The warning of torrential rains in Baix Llobregat, Barcelonès, Vallès Occidental, Vallès Oriental and Maresme has led some schools and institutes to ask parents to pick up their children for fear that the floods will make mobility difficult later. But these indications come up against the recommendations of the Civil Protection, which has called to avoid traveling during the downpours and has urged children and teenagers to be left at school or high school. This is precisely the message that the Government wanted to send in the face of the final stretch of the DANA episode in Catalonia. “If the children are already at school, they don’t have to go and get them,” reiterated the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, in a press conference after the Government’s monitoring committee on the weather situation.
Parlon recalled that schools are safe places where students can take shelter and continue with classes throughout the day until the DANA alert passes. As he explained, the families will be aware of it because, in the same way that they received a warning on their mobile phone when the alert was activated, they will receive it when it is deactivated.
Could the Government have moved forward, with the forecasts on the table, so that parents would avoid traveling to take their children to class? The minister has argued that the Generalitat can only activate the alert with the Meteocat data available at any given time, because the DANA is a changing phenomenon and its movements cannot be anticipated any more than is already done.
The Civil Protection recommendation also applies to workers who are at work. In other words, when you receive the alert on your mobile phone, all you have to do is stay where you are, regardless of whether you are at work or at home. However, the warning should not be understood as a request for citizens to return home to protect themselves, since to do so would require them to move outside at a time when torrential rains can cause problems. For this reason it is necessary to clarify that in the face of the notice we receive on the mobile phone we must not go to pick up the children at school to take them home, nor leave work.
You don’t have to go looking for the car
Looking ahead to this afternoon, the Government has asked for extreme precautions, especially in the regions of Selva and Maresme – where flood zones and, above all, streams must be avoided. In this sense, Parlon has urged not to go looking for parked cars to avoid personal damage like those that have occurred in the Valencian Country, where the official death toll climbs to 214-217 adding the dead to Málaga and Castilla-La Mancha. If you have to travel, the Generalitat recommends using the AP-7 as an alternative to the coastal roads.
