The judge of Catarroja (Valencia) investigating the damage, Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, claims that the late call from Cecopi, the Generalitat body that coordinated the tragedy that caused 229 deaths in Valencia on 29 October 2024, prevented human lives from being saved.
The magistrate criticizes the fact that this device organized to manage the catastrophe – in which 29 representatives of municipal, regional and state institutions participated – was convened on the day of the dana at 3.00 pm. which will be held two hours later. And this delay has thwarted the adoption of measures to save human lives in municipalities such as Utiel (11,703 inhabitants), where the overflow of the Magro river caused six deaths. “(The Cecopi) was not held immediately after its convocation. The delay was not only evident in general terms for the organization of measures to protect the population,” the instructor says in an order notified on Wednesday.
Although the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) had decreed the red alert, the maximum scale, at 7.36 on the day of the tragedy, the Cecopi stopped ten hours later. It all started while the interim president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, of the PP, had lunch for almost four hours (3:00-6:45 pm) at the El Ventorro restaurant with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana.
When the Cecopi began, “measures could no longer be taken to save the lives of the victims of Utiel, since, by that time, most of them were dead or about to die. The same thing happened in places like L’Alcudia, Godelleta, Turís and Torrent”, complains the judge.
In addition to the delay, the judge highlights the episodes that the device recorded. “There were continuous cuts and disconnections of participants to reflect on,” specifies the judge. It alludes to interruptions this prevented participants connected via the Zoom video application, such as the Government delegate in Valencia, the socialist Pilar Bernabé, from following the debate on the most relevant measure of the day, the sending of the mass message on cell phones. The notification arrived on phones at 8.11pm, when most of the missing people were already dead. And 17 minutes before Mazón landed on the device that managed the crisis. The judge claims that if the alert had been sent earlier, lives would have been saved.
In her latest report, the instructor also recalls some deaths – the latest of which – recorded after the message was sent to the phones. He cites as an example the death of a minor in the Valencian municipality of Sot de Chera. “The woman and her eight-year-old daughter spent the night next to the lifeless body of her other younger son,” recalls Ruiz Tobarra.
The lack of warnings – underlines the instructor – also increased the extent of the tragedy. And it refers to the 37 who died during the flood who were users of the Generalitat’s teleassistance service. “The proceedings accumulate dozens of testimonies from people who saw their loved ones die, relatives who notified the emergency services without result, who warned of the precise place where they were about to die, who said goodbye, who tried to support, physically and emotionally, their relatives, recording how the water dragged the car in which two people were travelling”, specifies the resolution.
Following a request from the public prosecutor in the Acció Cultural del País Valencià (ACPV) case, the judge decided to incorporate the TVE documentary into the summary – which already numbers 42 volumes. The critical hours. The instructor also requests “the raw images and sound” of this program from regional public television À Punt. The images show Mazón together with the main defendant, the former Minister of Justice and the Interior, during the flood, Salomé Pradas, at Cecopi in L’Eliana, at night.
