MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish judge placed the former head of Valencia’s emergency services under investigation on Monday as part of a probe into who is to blame for the late alert about catastrophic floods that killed at least 225 people, a regional court said.
Nuria Ruiz, a judge in a court in Catarroja, one of the affected towns, said Salome Pradas was the highest authority in the emergency services.
“The problem doesn’t lie in the absence of information… but in the fact that in the face of this information, either it was ignored, its scope was not understood… or the relevant decisions were not taken by those who had the power to make them,” Ruiz said.
Flash floods on October 29 swept away people in cars and inundated underground car parks and ground floor homes on the outskirts of Spain’s third-biggest city in one of the worst natural catastrophes in its modern history. Three people are still missing.
Local residents have been fiercely critical about the failure by authorities to warn people in time about the risks of the storm and its resulting floods.
Ruiz is investigating whether there is evidence of crimes of homicide and injuries caused by negligence that may have led to avoidable deaths.
A text alert sent by Valencia’s regional government after 8 p.m. on the day of the floods warning people to take shelter arrived when buildings were already under water and many people were drowning.
More than half of the bodies recovered from the flooding were found in enclosed spaces, mainly inside houses and garages, the court said.
Ruiz said the alert “was late and wrong” and that the emergency coordination meeting, which started at 5 p.m., should have been convened in the morning.
The judge rejected a request for regional leader Carlos Mazon to testify unless he decides to do so voluntarily. Mazon, who has been under fire for how he handled the emergency, has special protection and can only be investigated by a higher court.
Nearly 60,000 homes, some 105,000 cars, and over 10,000 shops were destroyed or damaged, according to government data. Those damages are not part of the judicial investigation as the judge said they were unavoidable.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo; editing by Charlie Devereux and Bill Berkrot)
