A senior Emergency Services official claims that Salomé Pradas and the Fire Chief stopped the ES-Alert dispatch at 6 p.m.

ValenciaSalomé Pradas and José Miguel Basset. As expected, these were the two main individuals singled out by the Deputy Director General of Emergencies for the Valencian government, Jorge Suárez, who on Thursday defended himself in statements before the investigating judge, claiming that on the day of the DANA storm he had already proposed the use of ES-Alert on two occasions before 6:00 p.m. Specifically, at 5:15 p.m. and 5:38 p.m. This information was obtained by ARA from sources present at his appearance. This data confirms the information provided by other witnesses present at the Cecopio and by the videos of the meeting These documents, which have been added to the case piecemeal and against the wishes of the Generalitat (Catalan government), have been incorporated into the case. In fact, according to the official's testimony to the judge, he had completed a draft message by 5:45 p.m. The draft, which was reportedly written in a notebook, asked residents to move to higher ground in their homes—advice that was omitted from the first ES-Alert sent but included in the second. This warning was intended to alert people of the potential collapse of the Forata reservoir, which regulates the Magro River, but not of the situation in the Poio ravine, whose overflowing was responsible for the vast majority of the deaths.

According to Suárez's account, the alert wasn't disseminated at the time due to concerns raised by the then-head of the Fire Consortium, José Miguel Basset, now retired, who feared the message would cause widespread alarm and lead to residents fleeing their towns. He also requested that the text be reviewed by experts. 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 in Eliana. This arrangement lasted for an hour.

Linguistic changes in the message

During the time the meeting was held exclusively in person, Suárez 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 this point that, according to Suárez's account, Pradas; the regional secretary for 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 supposedly 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 demanded 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 forms that the People's Party (PP) considers excessively formal, close to Eastern Catalan, and far removed from the language used by the general public.

The forgotten Poio ravine

Concern over the Forata reservoir and debates about the ES-Alert text led to the situation of the Poio ravine being overlooked, whichIt was overflowing from 6 pm onwardsThe oversight occurred even though between 5 and 6 pm alone, 112 received 2,438 calls alerting them to the situation. Overwhelmed,The technicians did not warn their superiors about the disastrous situation on the riverbank.which the Júcar River Basin Authority had also warned them about at 6:43 p.m.an email–Information on river flow and rainfall could also be accessed online in real time–. At the Cecopio (Emergency Coordination Center), they weren't aware of what was happening until after 7:00 p.m. when the first images and phone calls from mayors began arriving. This forced them to postpone sending the alert because it was necessary to expand its coverage area. The warning was finally broadcast at 8:11 p.m., but with incorrect information. It asked people to avoid travel, but not to stay home and in higher areas, as a second message at 8:57 p.m. did request.

Suárez also explained why the Emergency Services technicians did not consult the Confederation's real-time data. He stated that the staff typically only read the emails sent by the hydrographic agency. However, during his testimony a few months ago, the head of analysis and monitoring for Emergency Services, Juan Ramón Cuevas, affirmed that the email alerting them to the extraordinary flow of the Poio ravine at 6:43 p.m. was not forwarded to the Cecopio (Emergency Coordination Center) because five members of the Confederation were present at the meeting. Another point the senior official addressed was the end—around 2:30 p.m.—of the firefighters' monitoring of the ravines, including the Poio ravine. According to the Deputy Director General of Emergency Services, his department did not authorize the demobilization of the personnel, which had been requested that morning. Regarding the Fire Department, he also said that he believes he recalls that the head of the department, José Miguel Basset, had already reported the removal of some bodies starting at 8:30 p.m.

Pradas denies that his requests delayed the ES-Alert and that the text was debated before 7 p.m.

Salomé Pradas's defense team attempted to contextualize some of the statements made today by Jorge Suárez, pointing out that the debate about the lockdown was "parallel to the sending of the ES-Alert, and that the warning to the mayors of the municipalities that could be affected by the reservoir's collapse was included in the draft of the message," so no "delay" was generated, nor would the spelling correction of the text have been. Furthermore, the former councilor reaffirmed what she said during her testimony when she stated that the first draft she saw was the one presented to her by Suárez shortly before 7:00 p.m., which referred to going to upper floors.