One of the tasks that had been giving rescuers nightmares was the pumping out of the water in the underground car park beneath the Centro Comercial Bonaire in Aldaia, as they feared the worse.
However, now with less that a metre of water in the parking bays they didn’t come across any bodies, in the parking or in the parked cars.
The operation finished last night with this excellent news. The Spokesman for the Bomberos de la Diputación de Huelva, Rafael Sancha, explained, “There might still be a metre of water down there but we have checked all the cars and there are no bodies in them or underneath them.”
The operation had begun on Sunday with military units belonging to the Unidad Militar de Emercencias (UME) and to the Parachute & Sapper Regiment from Alcantarilla.
The first to enter, once the water was low enough, was a drone belonging to the Policía Nacional. This apparatus confirmed that there were no bodies in the first 50 vehicles. This was the first good news but a more thorough search had to be carried out by personnel on foot, who confirmed the absence of bodies on all levels of the huge, shopping-centre, parking area measuring 2,000 sq/m.
It’s calculated that there were 200-million litres of water down there which were pumped out at two-million litres an hour.
Editorial comment: having spoken with our same source, María Angustia, who lives in Paiporta with her two daughters, she expressed a generalised doubt felt by many concerning the authenticity of this government press release; i.e., that they found no bodies. People believe that the authorities wants to keep the news about the number of victims down for the moment. We live in time, since Covid and the 2020 US elections where distrust of official sources has become common place.
(News: Aldaia, Valencia)
Keywords: Bonaire Shopping Centre, Underground Car Park, Pumped out, Fire Personnel, Soldiers, Drone, Vehicles, Empty
Reader’s comment: “Spain destroyed more than 256 dams between 2021 and 2022, “to restore the natural course of rivers”, in order to comply with UN Agenda 2030.″ Is this statement true?” – Julie
Editor Replies:
“Dam Removal Europe is composed of WWF, The Rivers Trust, The Nature Conservancy, the European Rivers Network, Rewilding Europe, Wetlands International, and the World Fish Migration Foundation.
What are dams? Dams are not only big concrete structures blocking rivers, they can be as small as half a metre high!
Artificial longitudinal river barriers can be defined as “any built structures that interrupt or modify the flow of water, the transport of sediments, or the movement of organisms and can cause longitudinal discontinuity” and can be categorized into six main types, based on their features and impact on water flow and the fluvial habitats. Minimum height thresholds should not be considered when identifying such barriers.”
In other words, your source is talking about weirs rather than reservoir dams, although they certainly haven’t made that clear and were probably just trying to get a sensationalist article together.
Reader replies: “I do believe major dams are being removed. contrary to your comment.
“The Government has ordered the demolition of 12 of the 21 hydroelectric concessions that expired in this legislature. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge – has recorded the end of the concessional period or the extinction, since January 2020, of 21 concessions with just 37.7 megawatts (MW) of power, located in the provinces of Alicante, Asturias, Cáceres, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Guipúzcoa, Huesca, Navarra, La Rioja, Teruel, Valencia and Zaragoza”
“This concession was extinguished in November 2020 and was exploited by Iberdrola. Ecological Transition ordered the demolishing of the dam with the support of several environmental groups, which advocate recovering the original state of the rivers, as set out in the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which was proposed to return 25,000 kilometers of river courses in the EU to its free flow”
I post the link, which you probably won’t provide.” – Julie
Editor replies: So from “256 dams destroyed in Spain,” we are down to 12 out of 21, all of which produce less that 12 MW. Also, from your article: “In November 2018, Ribera explained that there were 115 hydroelectric projects in inter-community basins that had been extinguished. Around one hundred were abandoned and with little apparent economic profitability.”
You originally asked if it were true and I replied that it was a little sensationalist in its composition, which when you take into account the difference between weirs and reservoir dams, that it fails to distinguish, and the total number decomissioned for being obsolete and ineffective after 70 years, perhaps we can agree on this.
I missed your link when configuring your first comment (Italicised & coloured) as I have to convert it so that it opens in a new window frame and is a “no follow” so that the site does not get penalised for it. There are now three links coming out of this one article alone, so no more please.
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