So who decided when to send the alert, and what were they waiting for?

Transcript

1. Somebody had to decide to make every phone in the area scream.
2. On Friday, 2 October, in a flooded Spanish town,
3. that alert went out at 7:36, about 80 minutes after the rain began.
4. The town is Madrigueras,
5. in Castilla-La Mancha, in central-eastern Spain.
6. From around 6:15, in about 2 hours,
7. more than 140 litres of rain fell on every square metre.
8. That's the regional government's first figure.
9. The mayor said water reached 2 metres in some houses.
10. A woman of 102 drowned in her home.
11. There were more than 90 rescues.
12. So who decided when to send the alert, and what were they waiting for?
13. It came from Castilla-La Mancha's emergency authorities, through a national system.
14. Spain's rules leave that call to them,
15. based on the weather warnings and on what is already happening.
16. There was a warning.
17. At 5:02, the state weather agency, AEMET, issued an orange warning for the area:
18. up to 30 litres of rain in an hour.
19. Orange means a significant risk.
20. Under the region's own plan,
21. receiving an orange warning puts the plan on alert automatically.
22. A phone alert is not part of that rule.
23. When that warning reached the emergency services is not on the record.
24. At 7:39, 3 minutes after the phone alert, AEMET issued a second orange warning.
25. It said more than 100 litres had already fallen in 2.5 hours.
26. Regional government sources told the newspaper ABC
27. that an AEMET email reached them at 7:45,
28. raising the warning from yellow to orange.
29. AEMET's own archive shows an orange warning for the area from 5:02.
30. The central government's delegate said: "I honestly believe nothing failed."
31. The region's president said there was no red warning here,
32. and that not even the protocols called for an alert.
33. The region's own statement gives its reason for 7:36:
34. the rising number of incidents reported to 112, the emergency number.
35. The alert itself also cited the rain that kept falling.
36. Would a red warning have made it faster?
37. Near Valencia, in October 2024,
38. AEMET issued two red warnings for the south coast at 7:36 in the morning.
39. The phone alert went out at 8:11 that night.
40. 233 people died in that flood.
41. The judge investigating it has called the warning late,
42. and the case is still open.
43. There, red warnings alone did not bring the alert sooner.
44. It can't tell us what would have happened in Madrigueras.
45. What the record still doesn't show
46. is what reached the region's emergency authorities between 6:15 and 7:36.