Who are the officials Pradas and Argüeso blame for DANA's management?

ValenciaBlame subordinates. This old and often effective judicial strategy is the one implemented by former Minister of Justice and the Interior, Salomé Pradas, and former regional Secretary of Emergencies, Emilio Argüeso, to avoid a conviction for failing to provide timely and adequate notice citizens on October 29th when the DANA claimed the lives of 228 people in the Valencian Community alone.

By now, the two former high-ranking officials of the Popular Party have already named five alleged perpetrators. These are the recently retired head of the Valencia Provincial Firefighters Consortium, José Miguel Basset; the president of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHX), Miguel Polo; the deputy director general of Emergencies, Jorge Suárez; the head of the Emergency Coordination Service, Inmaculada Piles; and the head of communications for this department, Aurora Roca. Of all of them, Pradas and Argüeso place particular blame on the first two, to the point that the former regional secretary has requested their indictment. He has requested that the rest testify as witnesses.

The most criticized is Miguel Polo. He is criticized for not informing the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) about the situation in the Poio ravine. He is also criticized for not alerting the agency that at 6:43 p.m. the agency had sent an email warning of a sharp increase in the flow of the ravine after two hours of failure to issue any warning. This is the now-famous information blackout denounced by the PP. The CHX alleges that, despite this gap, the information was accessible on its website for any citizen and for Emergencies through a dedicated app.

Second on the list of those allegedly responsible for the alleged lack of information, according to Pradas and Argüeso, is José Miguel Basset. He is criticized for his department At 2:30 p.m., the firefighters who were monitoring the Poio ravine were withdrawn.. This is a measure that the former regional secretary stated he learned about "two weeks later." Initially, the former head of the Valencia Provincial Fire Consortium justified the decision because The flow dropped and the workers wanted to eat.He later apologized for these remarks and explained that the measure was taken "solely based on technical criteria." "It was an operational decision made because, at the time, the flow did not represent a significant risk and the trend was clearly downward," he clarified.

In the request for charges against Emilio Argüeso, the one against Jorge Suárez is not included, although in his statement before the judge He blamed him for not reporting the emergency calls received by the 112 service. There were up to 2,438 calls between 5 and 6 p.m. alone. "He said that phone calls shouldn't be taken into account because a single traffic accident can cause fifty people to call," he argued. Unlike Polo and Basset, Suárez—who heads the 112 service—belongs to the Generalitat's Emergency Department, which was headed by Argüeso.

Two women complete the list of those accused. The first is Inmaculada Piles, whom her two former bosses also blame for the fact that Cecopio received "no information" about the phone calls to 112. The second is journalist Aurora Roca, whom they criticize for being "responsible" for informing the media about the decisions made. The dramatic situations were reported in newspapers, television, and radio stations, and the highest-ranking officials of Cecopio claim they were unaware of them until it was too late.