The mayor of Aldaia (Valencia), Guillermo Luján, has stated that “nobody” notified them “of anything” on October 29, 2024, the day of the devastating dana that has caused 234 deaths in the province of Valencia, and he has emphasized: “We were unaware that a brutal torrent was coming for which we did not have medicine.”
The councilman made these statements in his declaration as a witness before the judge who is handling the case for the dana, in which the former Minister of Justice and Interior Salomé Pradas and his former deputy, Emilio Argüeso, appear as the ones being investigated.
Luján has detailed that “there was no prior communication” from Emergencies directed to Aldaia, a town where six people died in the flood. He explained that on the 25th, with the data they were receiving from the Inforatge service, they activated the municipal emergency plan, started up the generator sets and the vehicles of the Brigada, and reinforced the staff of the Local Police.
As he has set out, on the same day as the flood, when Aemet issued the red alert, they passed the warning on to the residents. He recalled that “we have a chronic illness with flooding, so we apply the chronic medication.”
He described that during the morning it barely rained in Aldaia, although the wind was very strong and there were reports of trees falling. At midday they proceeded to close the ravine with sluice gates and issued a second communiqué to the population to inform them of the road traffic cutoff in the area.
“We were unaware that a brutal torrent was going to come for which we did not have medicine,” he reiterated, before emphasizing that “nobody” told them they had to go up to higher floors “and they undermined the ravine of La Saleta.” In his words, “it’s not that we were not warned; it’s that, in fact, Aldaia was not even mentioned.”
He placed the arrival of the water to the urban area at around 8 p.m. and explained that between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. they realized that “this was something else,” different from the municipality’s usual flooding. He pointed out that they received the second ES-Alert when they were already “in chaos.”
The mayor indicated that they had to resort to “self-management” and “survival.” He stated that “we had the feeling of being abandoned” and he stressed that no official communication reached them, not even by email.
The first mayor has admitted that, at around 20:30, the Local Police asked residents to move their vehicles because "we had no knowledge of the scale" of what was happening. He added that "if we had had information, the population would have been warned so that they could move to higher areas."
He said that same afternoon he learned what had happened on the bridge in Picanya, but he insisted that "no one" warned them of the "special flash flood that was coming, which required a decisive measure, which was to go up to the upper floors." He added that "the police themselves had to go up into neighbors' homes to save themselves."
Arrived late
At the doors of the courthouse, Luján emphasized to the media that Aldaia began to flood from 20:00 and that the warning "arrived late," given that the first ES-Alert did not include the recommendation to go up to high floors. He summarized the situation by pointing out: "That was a tsunami that no one warned us about."
He specified that "between 21 and 22 hours that day is when we detected that it wasn't a normal flood. There were people asking for help and we realized that it was a terrible tsunami and that it was already late." He denounced that "there was abandonment of Aldaia and the Saleta ravine was the great ignored and unmentioned one."
As he pointed out, everything that happened has generated "terrible fear" among the population of Aldaia, and for that reason he has again demanded that the improvement works in the municipality that they have been calling for for decades be carried out.