The fire chief during the DANA storm admits he had doubts about sending the ES-Alert at 6 pm

ValenciaJosé Miguel Basset, the chief inspector of the Valencia Provincial Fire Consortium who was in operational command during the DANA storm in the Valencian Community—now retired—admitted on Wednesday to having raised concerns about sending the ES-Alert at 6:00 p.m. He stated this on Wednesday in the Catarroja courthouse, which is investigating the deaths of 230 people, according to sources present at his testimony. Basset recounted that around 5:30 p.m., the Júcar River Basin Authority informed them of a serious risk at the Forata Dam, which could break or overflow—as ultimately occurred. It was at that moment that the Deputy Director General of Emergencies, Jorge Suarez, suggested sending an alert to the public, urging residents to move to higher ground in their homes. The proposal was not considered by any other member of the Cecopio (Provincial Emergency Coordination Center) except Basset, who objected that the wording should be prepared by a specialist.

Basset's statement coincides with one made by Suárez a month ago, when he affirmed that he had completed a draft message at 5:45 p.m. The draft, which was reportedly written in a notebook, asked residents to move to the upper floors of their homes, but the alert was not disseminated at that time due to concerns raised by Basset, who feared the message would cause widespread alarm and lead to residents fleeing their towns. He is also reviewing the draft. Faced with this debate, at 6:00 p.m., the then Minister of Justice and the Interior, Salomé Pradas, decided to suspend the meeting, which was being held remotely—a method that allowed representatives of state agencies to participate—and continue only in person with the officials present at the Emergency Coordination Center located in the town of Eliana. This format lasted for an hour.

According to Suárez's account, during the time the meeting was held entirely in person, he instructed the head of the 112 analysis unit, Juan Ramón Cuevas, to prepare the procedure and draft the text in a document. It was already 6:15 p.m. The message was ready at 6:38 p.m., and the technician entered it into the ES-Alert computer system. But it was at that moment that Pradas, the regional secretary of Emergencies, Emilio Argüeso, and the director general of Emergencies, Alberto Martín Moratilla, allegedly halted the process because they believed it was necessary to notify the mayors of the affected municipalities first. Another reason that reportedly delayed the dissemination of the alert was the former regional minister's doubts about her legal authority to decree a lockdown of the population. In fact, according to Suárez, Pradas requested that the phrase "any travel is requested to be suspended" be changed to "please avoid..." to avoid imposing a mandatory tone. Similarly, the former regional minister and Vicent Mompó, president of the Valencia Provincial Council, also requested linguistic modifications. These included removing the accent mark from the name of the province of Valencia, "Valencia," and replacing the words "tipo" with "tipo" and "este" with "este." All these modifications were intended to eliminate the forms that the People's Party (PP) considers excessively formal, close to Eastern Catalan, and far removed from the language used by the public.