The president of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ), Miguel Polo, has reaffirmed this Monday that the Cecopi meeting held on the day of the dana that left 230 dead in Valencia was a "chaos" because "who had to make decisions" did not adopt them, there was no prior emergency planning and the population was alerted too late. At the same time, he stressed that the effects of the catastrophe would have been "similar" even if the diversion work of the Poyo ravine towards the Turia riverbed had been completed.
During his appearance before the Congress commission that analyzes the tragedy, Polo has reiterated the same arguments he already presented before the court investigating the criminal case and before the Senate's investigation commission.
He explained that one of the infrastructures whose absence the PP criticizes in relation to October 2024 is precisely the one that contemplates the diversion of the Poyo to the Turia river. When asked if, had it been operational, it would have prevented the deadly flood, he replied no.
He specified that said work would have "a capacity of 800 cubic meters per second" while through the Poyo, around 3,500 cubic meters per second came to circulate. "The magnitude of the flood was enormous and evidently the consequences would have been similar," he concluded.
"There are no infallible works" and planning failures
At this point, he stressed that "works are always designed for a level of risk," so that "there are no infallible works" and that "measures to save people are not the same as those to save goods." "Infrastructures serve to save goods, but to save people what needs to be done is to warn them, because people can take self-protection measures. It is warning the population that saves the population," he emphasized.
Likewise, in response to questions from the PSOE, he detailed that the projects linked to the Poyo "were left in a drawer" after the change of regional government at the end of 2011, when the 'popular' Alberto Fabra replaced Francisco Camps, by letting the environmental impact statement expire. Subsequently, in 2019, already with the socialist Ximo Puig at the head of the Generalitat, the file for its tender was resumed, although the works have not yet been executed. "Since then, action has been taken with diligence," he pointed out.
"I am not Superman" and only operating system
Asked if, with the perspective of time, he would modify any of the decisions made on October 29, the head of the CHJ defended that "in principle" the Confederation "did what it had to do." "I would trust that others do what they have to do, I am not Superman," he added.
He also insisted that "the only thing that worked that afternoon" was the CHJ's Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH), which provides real-time hydrometeorological data, while the Valencian meteorology association Avamet did not send information to the emergency monitoring center because mobile phones stopped working.
As he denounced, "the only strategy some have is to try to dismantle the only information that was available, the only team that was where it needed to be and providing all the information. They want to make people believe that there was no information whatsoever, not even from the Confederation, but they will not succeed," in reference to the PP and Vox.
He also recounted that on that day, after 4:30 p.m., the head of operations at the Forata dam communicated that an emergency scenario would be declared at the reservoir and that the flow through the spillway would exceed one thousand cubic meters per second.
According to his version, the CHJ assumed that the data they provided was being passed on to the town councils, as established by the Flood Plan, and that, in parallel, the Generalitat would be making other decisions, although they later found out that this was not the case.
Throughout his speech, Polo reiterated that it is "obvious" that the Generalitat did not carry out "any planning" despite the warnings of the arrival of a DANA and that the reaction was late. As an example, he pointed out that at 3:00 p.m. the Cecopi meeting was called for 5:00 p.m. to assess the emergency situation in Utiel, where it had started raining at 1:00 p.m. and "they had already been flooded for three hours."
Delays, "parsimony" and criticism of Cecopi
"It is a striking parsimony," he indicated, before adding that at 5:00 p.m. there was already sufficient information – "there were already very significant flows circulating in some riverbeds" – to issue an alert to the public, as he proposed at the time, although he admitted that until that afternoon he did not know precisely what Es-Alert consisted of.
He has also rejected that the warning about the emergency scenario in Forata "diverted" the attention of the Cecopi from what was happening in El Poyo. "The CHJ did not monopolize the Cecopi, the surprising thing would have been to have to explain what a dam emergency scenario is because all of that is in the Flood Plan," he defended.
In his opinion, the problem with the Cecopi was not its format, but the time it was convened and "the capacity of those who had to make decisions." "It is a problem of subjects, not circumstances," he reiterated. Asked if, given the "chaos" of the Cecopi, level 3 emergency should have been activated for the central government to take command, Polo maintained that what the citizens needed was a warning "not a declaration of emergency 3."
Tension with PP and Vox in the commission
The moment of greatest tension occurred during the turn of the PP deputy César Sánchez, who branded Polo as "negligent incompetent" and as trying to "shirk responsibility" for not having warned about the situation in the Poyo ravine.
After the call to order by the president of the commission, the socialist Carmen Martínez, who reproached him for "intimidating" the witness, Polo responded by criticizing what he considers "lies." "Your problem is not knowing what real-time information is, and if you don't know what it is, this is what happens," he replied, referring again to the data supplied by the SAIH.
Likewise, he denounced the "lies" that, in his opinion, the Vox deputy Ignacio Gil Lázaro had directed at him in similar terms. "They told me that I cannot lie, but can they say whatever they want?" he asked the president.