The devastating floods that killed more than 220 people in Spain have delivered a stark warning on how official blunders can cause the failure of disaster alert systems in an era of hard-to-predict catastrophes.
As a reckoning continues over mismanagement of the October disaster, criticism is being heaped on the Valencia regional government, which failed to send an emergency alert to mobile phones until after 8pm on the first day — nearly 13 hours after the state weather agency warned of “very intense” rain.
Much of survivors’ anger has been directed at Carlos Mazón, the conservative head of the regional government. On the day of the floods, he had a three-hour lunch with a female journalist that, according to local media, did not finish until 6pm, when some towns and villages were already swamped and the first reports of missing people had come in.