Pradas: "It was absurd to wait for Mazón. If he didn't answer the calls, we didn't even know if he was coming"

Salomé Pradas recounts in the La Sexta interview that as the hours passed and the Cecopi developed without smooth communication with Carlos Mazón, the then councillor downplayed what the president of the Generalitat could contribute in the face of the devastation already being caused by the dana. Pradas denies waiting for instructions from Mazón, especially as the Es-Alert message took shape.

"I didn't wait for Mr. Mazón at all. It was absurd if he didn't answer my calls and we didn't know if he was coming," argues Pradas, who recalls that "he calls me at 20:10 to tell me he's coming to Cecopi." It is not at that moment, when there is one minute left to send the Es-Alert, that Pradas informs the then president that the message was going to be sent to mobiles, but 23 minutes earlier.

The former head of Cecopi during the dana explains that "by 19:47 I had already informed him that the message was going to be sent."

"I imagine he activates there because he then made some calls to his cabinet and protocol staff. It is at that moment when he starts to act, when he reacts and calls his team, and I imagine to prepare his trip to Cecopi," considers the former councillor.

During the interview, Pradas points out that, regarding Cecopi, her main disagreement is with Miguel Polo, the head of the CHJ. Hence, she didn't feel like calling him. "There were no hydraulic engineers like those from the CHJ at Cecopi. I didn't feel like talking to him because I was angry. Polo kept hesitating that afternoon. I asked for him to be called to talk about Forata. The tension was high. I reacted that way and I apologize. I needed Polo to inform us, and it was when they called him that he said in 13 hours, no, in two hours Forata could overflow. Time has proven why I was upset with Polo," she recounts.

For the former councillor, "the biggest failure all day was that we didn't have real information from Aemet and the CHJ about what was happening in the Poyo ravine area."

Regarding what the firefighters knew, Pradas assures that "the chief of the Firefighters Consortium (Basset) was there and did not convey anything, the Poyo ravine was not discussed." In relation to the flood of calls to 112 and the lack of transmission of those user complaints, "it will have to be Suárez who explains why that information from the 112 calls did not reach us. The calls did not reach us, and what Cecopi relied on was what we received from Aemet and the CHJ, and they did not warn us verbally, but by email at 18:45 when the great tsunami had already arrived."