How bad is it in your place now?

I think it is as heavy as last week here.

Rosemary

We had no rain on Tuesday. It was all pretty far North of us which came towards the sea when the hard, sun baked soil could not adsorb it.
It is thundering and lightning with a steady downpour. The fields below have standing water which was not there 2 hours ago..

There are supposed to be plans that can be pulled off of the shelf in case of flooding (the confederaciones hidrográficas have them). The army always has a unit ready to go. There's a NATO base in Bétera.

If the alert had been sent out at 8am instead of 8pm, everyone would have known inside Valencia and it would have been reported by the media everywhere else.

They want to turn the understandable anger people have with the current mismanagement of the situation into a generalised anger and their solution will be that this just wouldn't happen with them, as everything would be centrally controlled in Madrid, in spite of working examples of emergency response in Catalonia or the Basque Country.

I just took a quick look at the Australian one, it appears to work with normal text messaging and there is an instruction not to block the number which it is sent from.

The Spanish one works with cell broadcast and they can send a message to all phones in an area in a few minutes. Each autonomous community's government has control of their area. In this case the national weather office warned at about 8am and the Valencian government finally sent the warning to mobile phones at 8pm which was too late.

In other European countries, maybe Australia too, there are drills every so often and people are told what to do when a red, orange, or yellow alert happens and I'm sure it's something that should be done in Spain too.

Thanks for that, especially for the link, seems more like the UK version than the Aussie one I used to operate. I haven't managed to find out much yet about the new UK version but it seems to be sent more with the cooperation of the phone IOS companies (apple/google etc) rather than the phone networks - might avoid some of the issues we had with towers being destroyed as its sent straight to the phones.

Yes it comes through as a normal text in Aus - does seem the Spanish one is more like the UK version (as in my reply just above). One difference I found after the UK tests last year (just after I came home) is that you can turn OFF the emergency alert function on iphones (not sure about others), so that you would no longer receive them, and thats part of the phone IOS. In Aus the alerts all come from a number starting 0444 and yes, the number can be blocked, though the telecom companies are supposed to be working to prevent that.

The Aus ones can be sent in a few minutes, we used to pride ourselves on speed and accuracy of both map area and message content, but the size of the area and number of predicted mobiles within that area, drastically affects the speed of delivery. we did send some which were delivered lightning fast, but they were small areas, small bushfires for instance. To do even just the heavily populated southeast corner of Queensland during bad floods we needed (from memory, so don't quote me!!) around 5 or 6 hours and 20 or so separate messaging campaigns, sent at staggered intervals. The system of going via phone companies (UK/Spain) rather than telecom companies (Aus) does seem more efficient but there is always that human factor of deciding when to authorise the alerts to be sent, and in getting that message up the chain to the actual sending mechanism. We even had issues at times persuading senior officers to authorise messages, and sat there with our fingers poised over the button with the message ready to go, only to have the system time out while we waited for the OK to come through. Very infuriating!

I don't think any Aus State does regular public drills or tests - each State is responsible for its own Emergency Alert campaigns. We, as the actual State team of message senders, had to do bi-monthly training, but the authorisers only had initial training, and the only testing done with the public was a very rural area when the system first went live (2009) and when there was a major upgrade (around 2015?). Most people have received their first Emergency Alert when they are in imminent danger, and many have no idea until then that the system even exists.

The latest news is that overnight rain affected parts of Murcia but today a severe weather warning is in place in the north east around Barcelona.
Concerns about the possible health conditions on the ground are growing. Every one is now expected to wear gloves and masks when clearing or carrying items.
​​​​​​Dr inkable water is still required in certain areas. Only those with essential work are to continuing whilst the rest of the population are being asked to check on neighbours etc and move to higher floors.

Keeping this thread alive as it is important for people not to think everything is back to normal.
On TV they appear to be suggesting that there could be a possibility of serious contagions and they are actually talking of the possibility of having to vacinate for Tetinus.
Now I see they are showing a missive traffic jam into Valencia as there appears to be limited Access.....it looks ridiculous.....they can't even show the end it is so long!!!!!!

The health aspect is a huge worry for those working in the conditions and the people living in the affected areas.

Just seen a clip of some young boys playing football in the thick mud.

Rosemary

Normality is a very long way off but as you said the media and the general public will lose interest and forget about the people still living there and suffering the consequences. It is unbelievable how many will venture out to see the devastation for themselves just to be able to say that they did so.

Rosemary

There is a long running debate in Take It Outside that members might find interesting and with the current crisis happening here might like to add their thoughts and experiences.

https://britishexpats.com/forum/take...pt-2-a-948847/

Rosemary

Regarding the underground parking at Bonaire, they have inspected the first 50 vehicles and found no-one in them thank goodness. We all know that there will not always be good news on this place but at least it has begun well.

Rosemary

That is better news than I had been anticipating, I hope it continues in that vein. What an awful job the emergency services workers have.

Valencian Federation of Municipalities and Provinces calls for five minutes silence in memory of the victims of the DANA at 12 noon, 5th November. Town halls will probably sent out messages to their citizens to inform them of this. If some towns do not take part in a collective silence then maybe people could take that amount of time out of their day to stop whatever they are doing and stand silently.

Rosemary

After 2 days of pumping water they are preparing to pull a/many bodies out of the underground parking where we are staying..
The Army and firefighters from Cadiz all have their heads lowered awaiting the police and transport...

I thought they said no bodies have been found in the parking but maybe that is the one in the commercial centre?