So apparently Mazon the president of Valencia was having a 3 hour lunch with a female TV presenter - apparently it was a business meeting . All this was happening as the rains were visibly much worse than anyone expected a d It was clear there would be a certain degree of damage and danger. Meanwhile an emergency meeting had been called which Marzon ignored. He didn't actually get to the meeting until around 7.00pm. His lunch was at 3.00pm. Given the fact that Mazon clearly didn't want this information to be found out suggests that it looks like the making of a huge scandal with political consequences for PP.
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Different continent but I agree with you on your comment.. Same here but in Alfafar and the villages south as it is were they and their families live...
If it was not for the young and old volunteers this situation would be way worse...

Let’s just hope they don’t all go down with Typhoid. I see they had floods in Cadaques in Girona.

Yes, there are reports in the news and we have been getting SMS alerts from the health department daily...
We have stinking piles of trash in vacant lots scattered around; even in agriculture plots...
months and months for everything to be back to normal..

Another message from SANITAT saying to dress properly and mask up....10:34...

A clip from Channel 4 News appeared on my FB. Newsreader stated that dozens of cars have been swept away in the flood. Wish news people got their facts right.

Rosemary

I saw something on the BBC with a similar heading - but that related to cars near Girona, which impacted around 30 cars from the story.

Not sure if that's the same story. The images from Valencia were substantially worse - many hundreds.

In he end I think that they are inclined to mix things up because in the next sentence the newsreader that I heard said that there were 200 dead. So they took the numbers of cars in the Girona area but the dead from the Valencia area- Two distinct stories about two different areas made into one news item which is so misleading to those who do not know. Another factor is that they have a tendency to say Valencia as if it is purely the city instead of towns within the Valencian Province so this can also be very misleading.

Rosemary

they are saying 120000+ cars in the community Valencian....
They are stacked up like a breaker yards in our local football pitch and other flat area around the town...

I presume that they have similar areas to stack the furniture and other items.

Rosemary

And it's amazing that there is absolutely no debate about climate change!!!. Thousands and thousands of cars and what's the the solution - get your state insurance and buy another one . And it was cars that were the involved in most of the deaths . People caught driving ( and how mamy people wouldn't have driven even if they got the local warnings ? - people knew , there were AMEAT warnings of heavy rain and advice not to drive from the weekend on. It was on the news. And it was cars that was why people left their houses to move them. And it was cars that blocked roads, houses and obstructed emergency sevices. The solution should be massive investment in public transport in whole of Valencia. What is the point of the demonstration in Valencia to get the president to resign? How pointless ( besides it's the unions just using folk to push their political agenda). People should be demanding investment in better ways to tackle climate pollution. They should be demonstrating outside the huge fossil fuel companies. In fact the government should force them to actually pay for this!!! . But no- no one is interviewing the Green party on TV or radio are they? If you landed here from another planet you would be totally perplexed as to people directing all their anger at people for not helping them and not directing their anger on the people who deliberately cause it or deny it.

I admit to playing a bit of devil's advocate here, and please just see this as objective comments.
I've worked with floods like this for many years, issuing warnings to councils, rescue workers, emergency services, and in the later years by text to the public. I've watched the disasters unfold, the houses swept away, the torrential floods that destroy everything; I've organised rescues for people stuck in trees, swept away in vehicles, stranded on their roofs. Its devastating, it stays with you forever, those you couldn't save haunt you forever. One of my last big floods in Australia early in 2022 involved a car swept away, 14 year old girl vanished. They found her body last week, I remember the incidemt like it was yesterday.
My point is though, that there were warnings. The disaster & weather warnings system over there isn't perfect but its pretty fast and thorough. But people still carry on. We warned of flash floods on specific rivers and very specific areas, but people still went out. Huge campaigns about "If its flooded, forget it" but people still drive into flood water. Warnings of cyclones bringing 20 foot storm surges but people refuse to leave their homes, and even go to the beach to watch.
Doesn't matter what warnings you give, people will say you are scaremongering, ignore the warnings, carry on with their lives.

Many people now seem of the impression that this disaster only happened because there were no warnings, or the warnings were late.
Sorry, but this would have happened anyway. Maybe a few people would not have lost their lives on the roads - but who is to say whether they would've been safe at home? People would have died anyway. Its sad but its true.
The disaster was going to happen, with or without the warnings, and while I'm sure the system is no more perfect than ours was, the focus now should be on helping the survivors & the recovery effort, not on blaming the message senders. A storm like that was always going to claim victims.


On the more subjective side, I've been in northern Spain over the weekend & seen much tv coverage of the disaster.
Also spoken to some people up here who say that if they had been warned of torrential rain, they would have shrugged, put on a raincoat & carried on as normal. Warn all you like, but you have to take human nature into account too.

There is no debate on TV because climate change is pretty much an accepted thing. It's not like the UK where weather forecasts barely mention it and Nigel Lawson or someone has to be put on "for balance" if climate change is
mentioned.

People went for the car to take it to higher ground thinking it would be a normal thunderstorm, not something like this. If the message had been sent out 12 hours earlier, all schools would have cancelled classes instead of some and people would have been able to say to their employers that they won't be coming in today. Also some places flooded and barely a drop of rain fell which meant they might have thought they weren't going to be affected until it was too late.

Many people won't be able to buy a new car if they're paying off their current one, 20% of the current market value isn't much so it's a given that there has to be more public transport. If it's not put on, Mazón would be negligent (yet again).

I have seen several programs talking about where to build now that climate change is accelerating and what must be done in the future regarding flood zones. Catalonia announced it will re-review all planned builds, whether anything of it is another question. Also there is debate about reviewing emergency procedures, if perhaps Spain should evacuate towns as is done in the US.

If this were just the typical demo called by a union or a party then the amount of people we saw yesterday wouldn't have turned up. They are absolutely right to be angry and upset because the guy in charge of the emergency response didn't want to interrupt his lunch and everyone else at the top didn't have a clue what to do.

I tend to agree. Placing the blame solely on warnings is simply the fact that people want explanations , reasons and some target to vent their anger on. If it wasn't warnings it would be something else we would be talking about. And there were warnings - Valencia university closed after lunch and schools in many area were closed from 7.00 in the morning. What no one knew was how severe it was going to be. No one. And therefore the warning would only have been the standard warning we all get now and again. A few years ago where I am in Torrevieja there were the pings but people still went about their day as normal other than send their children to school ( as they were closed. So I am afraid the warnings are a bit of a Scape goat. As you rightly say people seem more inclined to think the authorities always over react so when nothing serious happens they think there is no need to heed any future warnings.
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