Imagine a year of rain falling in just three hours and 20 minutes. Each spring shower, each winter gust – delivered in a single downpour. This is what happened in the hills outside Valencia, in the south-east of Spain, six months ago. At least 227 people died, on October 29, the deadliest day of floods in Europe for decades.
When I recently visited the city of Paiforta, the mud and nautical cars had been eliminated, but the high water brands remained visible on many buildings. The ground is always so humid that it will not be worth repainting the owners that after the summer.
But perhaps the more sustainable heritage of the floods is the pressure to continue those responsible. Spain was one of the few countries to imprison former bank leaders after the financial crisis. Now he could – perhaps – from the prison of former civil servants for their emergency management.
When is a natural disaster made by humans? And when is human failure so austere that it breaks the law? A judge from Valence, Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, investigating these issues, with a speed that shame a British public inquiry. “The damage could not have been avoided, but the deaths could have had”, it is its initial conclusion. Although the paiforta torrents are biblical, the water has rarely reached the first floor of the buildings. If people had known their cars and their homes on the ground floor, there was a lot of sure space.
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Videos showing the extent of the floods.
Similar questions are asked in Los Angeles, after unprecedented fires in January. Yes, climate change overloaded a drought, but why were the city firefighters not pre-deployed as they had been in 2011? Some residents, including two reality TV stars, continue the city for alleged problems with the fire supply of firefighters.
The impact of any disaster – perhaps with the exception of an extinction event asteroid – is shaped by human actions. During the 20th century, the number of people killed by disasters fell sharply, from around 500,000 a year in the 1920s and 1930s to around 60,000 in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the OUR World in Data site.
This is because we have learned to protect ourselves. We have developed warning systems, flood barriers, etc. However, such progress is only to take stock of disasters today more scandalous for victims and loved ones.
Humans aggravate disasters by not preparing and warning, but legally, it is difficult to pin the blame. After deadly floods in 2021, German prosecutors did not pursue charges against a key official who went Awol, judging that failures were systemic. In Italy, after the 2009 earthquake at Aquila, seven scientists and civil servants were initially found guilty of manslaughter guilty for not warning dangers. But only one official has maintained his conviction, because he wrongly said that tremors earlier had not increased the risk of a major earthquake. “So we should have a good glass of wine?” asked a journalist before the deadly earthquake. “Absolutely,” replied the manager. He was sentenced to two years suspended.
Valence floods, however, seem a very clear example of incompetence. The forecasts had warned against the heavy rains the previous weekend. The University of Valencia had suspended all classes. But the regional government only sent one warning to resident phones at 8:11 p.m. to October 20. At that time, the stream that crosses Paiforta had exploded its banks and many victims of the 227 victims had died.
Judge Ruiz investigates Salomé Pradas, the regional official responsible for sending emergency alerts, and the regional emergency secretary Emilio Argüeso (both fired shortly after the floods) suspected of guilty manslaughter. In her testimony this month, Pradas admitted that she had no emergency management experience; She did not even know the system to send messages to mobile phones before the afternoon of floods.
A precedent comes from California, where the public service company Pacific Gas and Electric agreed to pay $ 13.5 billion to the victims for the role of its equipment in past forest fires. In 1996, the floods struck a campsite in the Spanish Pyrenees, killing 87 people. The regional government and the Ministry of the Environment were ordered to pay a compensation of 11.3 million euros for authorizing a campsite in a flood zone.
There is an argument that natural disasters should play the force of democracies: public responsibility. The economist winner of the Nobel Prize, Amartya Sen, argued that famines were made to humans: episodes such as Bengal Famine in 1943 were less caused by a drop in food supply and more by the inability of people to access food, often due to government policy. “No famine has ever taken place in world history in a functional democracy,” he wrote. Indeed, India has no significant famine since independence.
Authoritarian regimes seemed particularly likely to exacerbate natural disasters: Mexico badly responded to an earthquake in 1985, rejecting the first international aid offers; His failures accelerated the end of the state to one -party.
The problem today is that the disasters fueled by the climate expose the gap of democracies: the failure of long -term planning. In Valence, the regional chief Carlos Mazón abolished an emergency emergency unit a year before the floods, as part of an attack on bureaucracy. Like various other governments around the world, his has favored construction on flooding areas and avoided climate action. (Strong precipitation like the one that caused Valence floods are more intense and about twice more likely in the heated climate today than at the pre -industrial era, according to scientists from global meteorological allocation.)
The game of blame can be a distraction: climate change denies politicians such as Trump can focus on local factors (such as Los Angeles water supply) while ignoring the underlying causes of extreme time. Valencia survivors rightly focus on short -term political errors and long -term climate negligence. There is no doubt that theirs was partly a human disaster: there were six steps calling for the resignation of Mazón, who spent much of the key afternoon of October 29 Lunch with a journalist. (Others, on the right, blamed Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, although judge Ruiz said that emergency alerts were regional responsibility. The King of Spain, who was launched in the days that followed the tragedy, is no longer a target.)
Today, Paiforta is either half discovery or half abandoned, according to whom you speak. Many stores and houses on the ground floor are still rubble or construction sites. Some store owners, especially the oldest, will not come back. Paiforta is only a few stops on the Metro of the main station of Valencia, but the line is still being repaired; There is currently a bus replacement.
I met a woman called Cristina Marí Andreu, whose toy store was destroyed by the floods. She was able to reopen the shop, thanks to a quick subsidy of a supermarket chain and to buy a new car, with public funds. But she remained angry. “They forgot us for five days. We didn't have water or electricity, “she said. She and five relatives shared one, bathroom without water. The experience of receiving documents was deeply uncomfortable. “What I want is to come back six months. I want what I had. “
Climate -powered disasters require civil servants to act faster and better than before. Valencia officials failed the test. But it is questionable that even the competent authorities can meet the requests of residents – or if, as for the cocovio pandemic, they will almost inevitably do evil.
In a time of disasters, as in a pandemic, there will be losers: people who have to pay taxes to finance climate action, who are invited not to live in flood areas or who lose their property in extreme events. Covid struck the confidence of many people in institutions. A world of more semi-natural disasters can be a stormy thunderstorm for our elected leaders.
Henry Mance is the editor -in -chief of FT features
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