Oh sorry, I thought everyone has seen that.
Thanks Komsomolez
Valencia was the most affected, itâs a tragedyâŚmore than 200 fatalities and theyâre still counting.
Iâm surprised it was mentioned only today here, seems folks donât watch the news.
There is a climate change component, warmer air can hold more water vapor than becomes stronger rainfall.
This time, politics and anti-science ideas seem to had a stronger influence on what happened.
The meteorological event (Dana) was first identified on Oct 20 by meteorologists from a Spanish government agency, 9 days before the flood. The night before the flood, there was a maximum alert for several cities and villages. The day of the flood at 10h00, it was the maximum alert for the whole Valencia region (equivalent to a canton around here). The rain started at 15h00. What happened?
Meteorologists did their job. They rose the alert the night before. Theoretically, people should have not worked, or gone to school or whatever on Oct. 29. Instead people should have been sheltering at home, and people from known hazardous areas should have evacuated to safer locations.
Apparently, the civil protection organisms under the umbrella of regional and local governments failed in several regions and municipalities. Only a few municipalities gave the order to shelter at home, be alert, road closures and evacuate from hazardous areas.
The sad part is that people shouting climate change are making things worse. What happened in Spain is a known meteorological event. Yes, it can be made stronger by climate change, but itâs something that already happens.
In the remote past of 2019 there was another flood, no deadly, but big flood in the same region. At the time, it was identified that the alert system was deficient. Some people developed a new alert system that relied on pre-developed SMS messages depending on the alert level and time during a meteorological event. It was not implemented. Something happened, the SMS messages arrived when people had already drowned.
This is a developing story and the whole world can learn this failure. Whole story in Spanish via El Pais
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There is an app for Switzerland called ALERTSWISS.
I donât know how good it is (as in quick) for people in the endangered area. I downloaded it sometime this year and it went on quiet often during summer when it rained so much (mainly for Thurgau. You can set the cantons you wanna know about).
It also sends all-clear SMS later on, which I find good.
After a couple decades working in natural hazards, I also see a very interesting psychological phenomena. People assumes the earthquakes, floods, tsunamis they remember as the upper limit of what may happen one day. When specialists look at historical records and statistics, the event we have seen during our lifetimes are only red flags, then the best guess of what may happen one day should be made and plan accordingly.
This is understandable. Everyone has already stresses in life to worry about. Relationships, health, money, workâŚwhy include existential horror of realizing the universe, nature or whatever you want to call it can kills us very easily? So, we people prefer to make harvest festivals, thank supernatural entities before every meal or every weekend, and forget about the killing part and awful uncertainty. Donât worry, the preacher says that God loves Us!
Itâs comforting to believe that the river that didnât kill you 10 years before will not kill you this time. But, these are pure comforting thoughts, not research and much less civil protection.
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