A RED alert row has erupted after Sevilla’s mayor claimed last week’s orange alert was too weak – despite having received ten storm warnings.
The city’s mayor, Jose Luis Sanz, claims that the orange weather alert issued for October 29 was far too mild, insisting that a red alert should have been activated.
Yet, it has since emerged that the Agencia Estatal de Meteorologia (Aemet) sent no fewer than ten warnings to Sevilla’s town hall on the day of the storm – each one highlighting the growing threat of torrential rain.
The downpour last week flooded the city, cut off traffic, and sparked chaos and Sanz insists that a red warning would have prevented some of this damage.
‘It wasn’t about warning people that it was going to rain, they already knew that, it was that they should have activated a red alert’, said Juan Bueno, a spokesperson for the Sevilla municipal government.
‘Sevilla has paid an expensive price for the ministry’s incompetence’, he added.
A red alert would have allowed the city to mobilise faster and cancel school classes, increase emergency personnel, and deploy more police and firefighters to vulnerable areas, according to Bueno.
However Sevilla’s government subdelegate, Francisco Toscano, disagrees and has defended Aemet by condemning what he called an ‘unjustified attack’ on its professionals.
Toscano stated that the mayor’s statements do not reflect reality because storm updates were provided ‘more than ten times’ on the day.
An agreement that Aemet maintains with the Centro de Coordinación Operative (Cecop) of the Sevilla City Council ensured that meteorological updates were provided to the city’s coordination centre.
A red alert, Toscano added, was simply unjustified.
Criteria states that a red warning requires rainfall exceeding 120 litres per square metre in 12 hours or 60 litres in one hour.
On October 29, Aemet recorded 99.5 litres over 15 hours and local water company Emasesa measured 115 litres in the same time period – whilst this is a high volume of rain, it is not enough to meet red alert thresholds.
‘If we had activated a red warning, we would not have been in line with our profession and would have been criticised for it’, explained Juan de Dios del Pino, Aemet’s regional delegate.
He went on to stress that there was not one moment when his team’s forecasts indicated conditions severe enough for a red alert.
Toscano has expressed support for Aemet’s workers who work tirelessly to provide the best possible public service.
During a visit to their headquarters, he urged the mayor to abandon ‘political confrontation’ and emphasises that he must listen to Aemet because, as del Pino states, this type of rain will strike again and therefore
As this red alert row continues, Sevilla locals are left to deal with the aftermath of the storm’s chaos while they wonder whether all of the chaos could have been avoided.
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