Forata Dam and the Tsunami Narrative That Doesn't Fit

Forata Dam Does Not Irrigate Poyo: The Tsunami Map

Forata was peine, hidden, and water swept everything away. This phrase summarizes the accusation spread by word of mouth and on television: that dams were emptied without warning and that this maneuver, rather than the rain, explains the tsunami that devastated Algemesí and half the province. The mayor of that town, José Javier Sanchis, stated on TVE1 that his municipality flooded due to the Forata reservoir. That is the thesis. The problem starts with the map.

Three Floods, Three Basins, One Day

The first thing that dismantles the idea of a single wave is geography. According to the narrative repeated in the thread, there were three distinct episodes: the Utiel-Requena area, the Barranco del Poyo —Chiva, Paiporta, the so-called ground zero— and the Magro River, which flows into Algemesí. Forata feeds the Magro, not the Poyo, and the Rambla del Poyo has no upstream reservoir to regulate it. Furthermore, Algemesí is far from the Barranco del Poyo.

Hence, the most repeated hydraulic analysis concludes that mixing Forata with Paiporta is a gross error: two concurrent disasters in time, but independent in their channels. The final piece of the initial thesis points to the Júcar-Turia transfer and the Cavalls ravine as the origin of the wave in ground zero, near Picanya, and notes that the cited upstream reservoirs —referred to in the message as “Berengueber” and Cofrentes— were empty. The names that do recur are Buseo, Loriguilla, and Forata.

Does Forata Dam Regulate the Rambla del Poyo?

No. And that short answer breaks the most widely circulated version. Forata is a dam on the Magro; its opening, if it occurred, affected the rise of the Magro and towns like Algemesí, where at least eleven deaths are attributed to the overflow. The ravines are interconnected, true, but the appreciable interaction between the Magro flood and what happens in Chiva and downstream of the Poyo is, at best, debatable.

It is worth adding a datum circulating among neighbors: the reservoir appears full in public records, which fits poorly with the idea of a massive emptying. In the thread, it is spread that the CHJ (Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar) reported the dam was stabilized, managing inflows and outflows at a rate of 800 cubic meters per second, sufficient to maintain hydraulic equilibrium within a delicate situation.

The Warning Passed Neighbor to Neighbor

There is a testimony that orders the chronology better than any official statement. In Montroy, at 17:30, water was already entering homes. In Algemesí, the warning that water would be released from Forata did not come through official channels, but neighbor to neighbor and without an identifiable source. Before that warning, there were twenty centimeters of water in the street; afterward, the level rose to seventy centimeters and one meter inside the houses.

That is the core of the matter: not so much whether the gates were peine, but whether anyone warned. The Confederation maintains it does not have competence to issue public alerts. The Generalitat does not dispute that point: it demands the internal warnings it should have received. The discrepancy, for now, is about competences and minutes.

Fifteen Years of Blocked Works and a Dam Discarded in 2004

The other front of the narrative looks backward. Works to prevent flooding in the Barranco del Poyo have been blocked for fifteen years despite declared risks in several municipalities, according to disseminated information, arguing they are invisible actions with no political return. Added to this is that in 2004 the construction of a dam that would have protected sixteen of the hit localities was discarded, and the Plan Sur reservoir never saw the light.

To the above are added doubts about existing infrastructure: drone images show overtopping with damage to the face and abutment of the Buseo reservoir, on the Sot River, a tributary of the Turia. And some point to the Contreras reservoir, which would appear empty despite the rainfall. Regarding the official death toll, part of the circulating messages openly doubt the figures and cite the case of a tracker that stopped counting after locating eighty bodies.

What Remains to Be Confirmed

If flow records and images of Buseo end up in a file, the predictable outcome is that the focus shifts from rain to management: who decided to open, when, and who was informed. Predictable, not certain. As of today, no investigation is known to be open and without it, the discussion will remain a tug-of-war of versions.