The bill goes up and the deaths from natural disasters in Spain fall

• Interview "Our goal is to anticipate an eruption weeks in advance"

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Filomena inaugurated a year full of natural disasters: it began with a snowfall that froze the heart of Spain, followed by the reactivation of a seismic swarm in January that shook Granada and ends with a volcano that after 69 days expelling material is still in full eruption in The Palm. In between there have been several DANAS (isolated depression at high levels) and forest fires that have caused serious economic losses.

The estimate of the cost of this year's catastrophes is not yet closed, but the bill for the storm Filomena amounts to at least 1,157 million euros, according to the figure offered by the Aon Spain Foundation's Catastrophe Observatory during the symposium held this Thursday, coinciding with the first DANA of the season. A storm of cold, rain and snow that has put almost a dozen communities on alert.

"We came from the global pandemic in 2020 and in 2021 there have been great disasters in Spain.

said the director of Emergencies of the Spanish Red Cross (CRE), Iñigo Vila Guerra, who advocated "working to reduce risk in a comprehensive and intelligent way "combining" science and experience ", and" better using technology to act early and implement solutions based on the protection of nature. "

"Preventing is living" and "civil protection begins with oneself. The complexity of disasters means that sometimes aid does not arrive as we expect in a timely manner, and we must work so that society prepares for it," he said during the congress in which the report

and the creation of a

Annual Barometer of Disasters.

And it is that although they are less media coverage than Filomena, the accumulation of disasters that occur in Spain every year cause millionaire losses and dozens of deaths: 47 fatalities per year on average in the last five years analyzed in this work

A figure that has been decreasing because if you take into account the last 26 years, that is, since 1995, the average number of deaths is 57, and in the last 20 years, 49. Floods continue to be the main cause of loss of human lives due to natural disaster in our country (27%), followed by heat waves and marine storms.

"Floods are the ones that cause the most deaths and have effects on essential services

, such as water supply, which can have critical associated infrastructures," said Francisco Ruiz Boada, deputy director general of Prevention, Planning and Emergencies of Civil Protection and Emergencies of Spain.

"Now we call it DANA or explosive cyclogenesis but it is the same thing: it continues to rain a lot because it falls in

. In Biescas we said: it has fallen where it should not fall," he recalled, but, from his point of view, it cannot be ruled out no hypothesis.

'Black swans'

"Black swans were those emergencies that, given their low probability, were not planned. But this has changed since [the attacks on] the Twin Towers, in the United States, and now a high priority is given to emergencies of low probability but high impact" explained Francisco Ruiz. "The Covid has shown it," added this head of Civil Protection, who recalled that there are other possible disasters such as solar storms that "we think will not happen but we have to be prepared." He also mentioned the combination of natural risks with technological risks, with the Fukushima accident as the clearest example.

The number of deaths decreases but the economic costs due to natural disasters in our country rise.

, which represents an annual average of 2,413 million (approximately 10.7% more per year).

Floods, hail and drought are the phenomena that cost the most money.

The Mediterranean basin is the worst stop due to natural disasters.

Five provinces account for 41% of the economic damage: Murcia, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona and Malaga.

, at € 1,319 million and € 843.82 million respectively.

"There is a certainty when we speak in scientific terms and that is that emergencies are increasing. We see a longer duration and also a greater impact, such as the so-called sixth generation fires such as the one in Jubrique (Malaga), which was fed back and practically was impossible to extinguish ". Why are they getting stronger? "One of the reasons is climate change, there is a certainty in the rise in temperatures, there is a certainty in poor territorial planning and land use, and in the continued degradation of ecosystems," Ruiz listed, who underlined the

Jorge Serra Llopart, lieutenant colonel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), recounted the deployments they have made this year, starting with Filomena, "a severe winter storm that warned us and we were able to make an early deployment." As detailed, 1,500 troops, including members of the UME and the Army of the Earth, worked to try to make the effects of the snow last as little as possible.

"There was a whole cascade effect that ended up affecting infrastructures in many ways," said Marcos Borges, professor at the Tecnum School of Engineering at the University of Navarra. "The most affected infrastructure was transportation, as there were impassable roads, abandoned vehicles, food supplies were affected, at their source and because they could not reach their places of consumption. There were many blocked streets and doctors had problems reaching the places where they were consumed. health centers and ambulances to transit ", summarized this expert.

As detailed by José Antonio Martínez Páramo, general coordinator of the Environment of the Madrid City Council, during the 30 hours in a row in which it snowed 1.25 million tons of snow fell. "In addition, 9,000 tons of waste accumulated in the streets that could not be picked up by garbage trucks because the city was paralyzed. "The subway was the only transport we could use, and it was an escape valve," he said.

Of the five million trees in Madrid, 1.7 million depend on the City Council for their maintenance and 800,000 were affected by Filomena, 80,000 of them irretrievably, as they had to be cut down.

Only in the management of the damaged trees, the City Council spent 46 million in the management, 30 of them in the Casa de Campo.

13 eruptions in 500 years

In La Palma, the UME troops have been deployed since September 19, when the volcano erupted, forming part of the device directed by Miguel Ángel Morcuende, director of the Special Plan for Civil Protection and Emergency Attention for Volcanic Risk of the Canary Islands ( Pevolca): "There are almost 200 members of the UME but also the comrades of the Army who help in the removal of ashes, which is something tremendous." In addition, they carry out reconnaissance flights, monitoring the progress of the laundry, air quality measurements and taking samples and supporting the evacuation of citizens.

Alejandro Izuzquiza Ibáñez de Aldecoa, Director of Operations of the Consorcio de Compensaciones de Seguros (CCS), highlighted that the eruption of La Palma has revealed the high lack of insurance in much of the national territory, and in the Canary Islands it is especially significant ". Since the eruption began, "2,300 requests for compensation have been received, 50 million euros have already been paid and it is estimated that the total amount of payments will exceed 95.5 million.

From Tajuya, Carmen López, director of the Central Geophysical Observatory of the National Geographic Institute (IGN), connected to explain the details of the management of the volcanic emergency: "We have had 13 eruptions in the last 500 years and La Palma was the island with the most probability of harboring an eruption, "he said.

"The problem has not been its explosiveness or its size, it has not been a large eruption, the problem is that it has arisen in a very populated area, very rich and far from the sea. It has not happened like with the Teneguía, of 1971, that immediately found the sea and did not do much damage. But this time, very close to where the eruption began, there were houses, "said this geologist who considers the preventive measures that were taken" a great success "and that allowed the population to evacuate. . "The area where the eruption would begin could be forecast in the short term and we have not had to mourn any misfortune other than the economic losses and the misfortune of losing your home and your job."

The geologist recounted the daily work that her team does - between 6 and 8 members of her unit who are taking over - to monitor the volcano: "We will stay as long as necessary, and then we will have the data that will allow us to better understand this natural phenomenon".

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