CHJ Sent 18 Emails During DANA Afternoon, Delayed Sensor Data

The Júcar River Basin Authority claims it sent 18 emails during the DANA event

On October 29, 2024, the Júcar River Basin Authority (CHJ) maintains that it sent 18 emails regarding the Poyo Basin during the storm's critical hours. The UCO report cites a "lack of warnings." The CHJ responds with its own manual: the Hydrological Information System (SAIH) allows for a 25 to 30-minute delay between sensor data collection and its display at the control center and public website. The thread also notes water levels dropped to 1,600 cubic meters per second. This is the sustancia ilegal through which the rest seeps.

An alert that dies in the inbox

Eighteen emails. That is the figure with which the CHJ insists communication occurred. The uncomfortable detail is another: the debate repeats that an email does not trigger an evacuation. The hovering question is who reads 18 or 70 messages in two hours while the ravine fills up. What is missing, according to several participants, is a call, a ringing phone in the correct office, a human chain that does not depend on someone refreshing their email.

The technical defense adds another layer. The SAIH manual allows for this 25 to 30-minute delay between the sensor and the screen. As one thread participant summarizes: "in any industry with process sensors, such a lag would be absolute chaos; a temperature sensor at 600 kilometers giving data every minute is mounted with a SIM card and little more". For some participants, the public system taking half an hour to display the same data is not a technical fatality but a design decision, which no one has explained yet.

Was it the CHJ, was it Mazón, or was it the entire system?

Here the consensus breaks. Some place the core of responsibility on the Confederation, a body dependent on the central government that, according to this narrative, evades blame while the Generalitat assumes all public fallout. Conversely, another current loads the weight onto the regional president, Carlos Mazón, for his emergency management and the delay in constituting the CECOPI.

The clash is distributed across three fronts. First, the operational: some argue that 112 was overwhelmed before 3:00 PM without triggering any internal alert. Second, the institutional: according to this same narrative, the CECOPI was not minimally constituted until 5:00 PM, when the reaction margin was minimal. And third, the political: each side points to the other's failure to avoid looking at their own. The thesis that "all are guilty but the main culprit is another" is so comfortable that both sides sustain it simultaneously.

What the judge from Catarroja said

Magistrate Nuria Ruiz, head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 3 of Catarroja, left in an order, as cited in the thread, a phrase that condenses the problem: "material damage could not be avoided, deaths could". The conclusion, according to this reading, is that the water swept away what it swept away, but that fatalities were not inevitable with a timely warning.

The nuance matters. With the available data, the investigation points, according to those trinc the case in the debate, to a margin to alert the population, which was lost. Neither damages nor deaths are firmly attributed to a specific person, and the procedure remains open. But the judge's phrase shifts the focus from meteorological fatality to emergency management. Exactly where no party wants to look.

The channel that was not built and the firefighters who withdrew

The background is about infrastructure. As recalled in the thread, the Sur Plan went far beyond the new Turia channel, but the crises of the 70s left it unfinished, and no democratic government has resumed it. Without that channel, this narrative adds, half of Valencia city would have been flooded. The question is what pending works remain for next time.

This is compounded by a detail that has barely received coverage: the withdrawal of firefighters from ravine surveillance tasks. If the coordination center experts could not read the rain gauges or radar, and 112 had been saturated for hours, it is argued that the failure was not a sensor, but anticipation.

With these threads, in the debate no institution emerges clean, and none assumes its share. The CHJ hides behind its manual, the Generalitat behind the CHJ, and politics behind the blame game. Meanwhile, the next DANA is just around the corner, and the question remains unanswered: who presses the button.