Imma Solé: "At no point have I felt obliged to send an ES-Alert"

BarcelonaHeavy rains, strong winds, problems on Rodalies... The start of the year for Imma Solé as deputy director of Civil Protection has been intense. She speaks to ARA from the Emergency Centre of Catalonia (CECAT), in the Ministry of Interior, a space where she has spent hours and hours locked away managing emergencies.

How far should Civil Protection go and how far should citizens go?

— A society that lacks knowledge is a society that is at the mercy of what may happen. On the other hand, a society that knows the risks it faces has a very high capacity for resilience. Obviously, a normal person does not have anemometers [to measure wind speed], does not have weather stations, does not have chemical product sensors... The administration has this, and that's why we have to provide information.

Sometimes people complain about alerts or restrictions, especially when they don't notice the effects of the emergency.

— Yes, because their daily lives are altered. We are very aware of this and it must be very well founded. What we seek is that, in the face of a high possibility of damage, the person can protect themselves. These forecasts, of wind or rain, normally have a statistical component. We try to alert at the point where there is a strong possibility that it will happen, but also that it is quite guaranteed. It's up to us to decide whether to warn when the probability is 99% or 70%. I prefer to warn from 70% onwards. There is a statistical margin that must be assumed.

Do we live looking little at the time that passes?

— It depends on the areas. It will depend on whether this more extreme meteorology is becoming more established. I think that sometimes we lose contact a bit with what the earth, the weather, and the sky are. My uncle was a person who went to the fields and knew everything. New generations have been losing this knowledge. 

The last few months have been intense.

— Since Christmas. We hope that this passage of squalls has had some explanation and does not continue so intensely. 

Inside Civil Protection, it must be lived more intensely. 

— We notice it a lot, because our daily life is emergencies. This job is very intense. It demands a lot of your time, many hours, and of course, when there is a continuity of emergencies, the team notices it. You have constant calls, you have to send an alert, you see how an area begins to flood… You feel the adrenaline.

And can he rest amidst such frequent emergencies?

— You follow it, you organize it, there are moments when you cannot leave the CECAT. I am the operational deputy director, but then I have my colleagues. Where one doesn't reach, another does. Our team is a cogwheel. But it's not just us. There are the Mossos, the Firefighters, the Rural Agents, the SEM, Trànsit, people from Endesa, from Ferrocarrils, from Rodalies connect to us… One of the great strengths we have as Civil Protection is transversality.

Be that as it may, it ends up being many hours.

— I have the good fortune to have a job that is highly regarded and not poorly paid. Not everyone can have a job that offers the security I have, for example, as a public worker, which does not depend on my contract ending in a month. That is also a stroke of luck. During the pandemic, the lady or the gentleman who came here to clean, the security guard at the door, they also had to come every day. I feel very recognized in my work. There are people who do not have this recognition and whose work is fundamental and perhaps not as well paid as mine. What we also know is that we are prepared for when the phone rings. It has happened more than once that at two in the morning it rings because there is a company in Tarragona that has a chemical leak. Well, come on, let's go. 

After all that has happened, do you see people more aware?

— Yes. I notice this demand for information, that people want to know what's happening and what you recommend. We are lucky in that we also have a very structured collaboration with the media. We look for that forecast that allows us to know what might happen the next day and be able to warn the population in time so that they can organize.

You are increasingly using ES-Alerts.

— Fortunately, citizens are reacting in an exemplary way to these messages. This tool also has to evolve. Now we can only send maximum alert messages, with this strident sound. But we anticipate that later there will be ways to modulate this warning, that it be softer, that it be perhaps more like an SMS. We will possibly have this during this year. Even, in some cases, it will be possible for the user to cancel the alert, especially those that could be more informative. But this no longer even depends on governments, but rather on IT companies. We have already been talking with the Ministry of the Interior and we know that during this year they already foresee changes to these applications that can allow for greater usability. This year we could already have a less sonorous alert that we can use, not to warn of a vital risk, but in a more preventive way. I imagine a person who is driving and hears the strident alert and it worries me because they might get scared.

Is the criterion for activating it completely technical? 

— It's very technical. The activation of an ES-Alert is because there is a situation that can affect people's lives. And in these cases, it is a very technical assessment. If you know that a certain amount of water is falling, then there is technical work to assess what effects it can have. If you have a wind speed level that can be at peaks that are not the usual ones and with directions that are not the usual ones for the area, as has happened this year, you have to take measures because you know it will have an impact on the entire territory. During the last strong wind episode, we had more than 7,000 calls to 112 in one day. I had never seen that before.

In an ES-Alert, therefore, it is not that the minister enters and presses the button.

— No, the councilor accompanies us a lot and asks everyone for information. At no time did I feel obliged, they never told me that I had to press the button [to send it].

Lately, there has also been a lot of talk about the emergency kit.

— We advise you. Imagine you use medication every day and you have to evacuate your home. If you have it ready, you save yourself a headache. If you take your documentation, it is a way to identify yourself in a complicated situation and it is also a way to withdraw money from the bank. Everyone has to prepare a little. Nowadays we not only have meteorological risks; there are more and more technological ones, like blackouts. We must be prepared as a person, as a family, as a company, as a neighborhood, as a town...

How is communication with Rodalies?

— We have constant communication. From Civil Protection, we have communication with all the operational rooms of the different infrastructures. We are concerned about rail transport and we have contact with Renfe, with Adif, with Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC), with Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB). We especially intervene when there are people at risk or there is an incident due to crowds.