The Valencian region had not yet finished counting its dead in the terrible floods that occurred on the evening of Tuesday, October 29, when anger was already rising against the local government's handling of the crisis. The reason? Valencians didn't receive an alert on their phones asking them not to leave their homes until 8 pm on Tuesday. By this time, the south of the city had already descended into chaos, with the V30 Valencia bypass and the V31 Albufera road beginning to flood and completely cover car wheels, forcing users to abandon their vehicles and seek refuge at their peril. The surrounding communities were already devastated.

"By the time I got the message, it was too late for all those who had already been trapped by the floodwaters while trying to get home from shopping or work," said Anna Martinez, 54, contacted by telephone. For her part, she was safe at home in the center of Valencia, after the town hall of Picassent, a town on the southern outskirts of Valencia, decided at 3 pm to evacuate the secondary school where she teaches. "In Valencia, there were big black clouds, but it didn't start raining until around 7 pm, which created a false sense of tranquility. What we didn't know was how much water had fallen on the inland communes earlier in the day and would arrive here suddenly in the form of floodwaters."

The authorities, for their part, had all the information they needed to prepare an evacuation plan or ban non-essential travel. The arrival of a cold drop with potentially dangerous consequences came as no surprise. The Spanish meteorological agency Aemet had issued its first alert five days earlier and raised it to its highest level at 7:30 am on Tuesday.

Shortly before 9 am on social media network X, emergency services advised Valencians to avoid traveling. At 11:45 am, they issued a hydrological alert on social media concerning the flooding of the Magro River, a tributary of the Jucar, whose flow had already reached 1,000 cubic meters per second and which, almost five hours later, caused enormous damage as it passed through the municipalities of Utiel, Requena, Chiva and Buñol. At 12.20 pm, another alert was issued concerning the high flow measured in the Rambla de Poyo, whose flood would wash away the Picanya bridge in the evening, before devastating the municipality of Paiporta, the epicenter of the tragedy, with more than 40 dead. If the rivers overflowed upstream, there was no reason why they wouldn't also overflow downstream.

You have 31.38% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.