Spain floods expose flaws in Europe's early warning systems

• Early warning systems under scrutiny after Valencia floods
• Advance warnings crucial in fast-changing climate
• Local government blamed for slow response

BARCELONA - At 7.36 a.m. on Oct. 29, Spain's national weather service AEMET issued a maximum alert warning of "extreme danger" from flash flooding in Valencia, a densely populated region on the country's east coast.

Due to a slow response by the local government - which is in charge of sending alerts to citizens' phones - news of the danger did not trickle down to the people most at risk.

This disconnect between national weather agencies and local governments has shone light on the different ways countries alert citizens to the perils of extreme weather, an ever more frequent occurrence in a fast-changing climate.

So that Tuesday, more than 845,000 people across 68 affected municipalities went about their day as normal - commuting to work, sending children to school - while the most powerful flash floods in recent memory formed after torrential rains lashed the Magro, Turía and Poyo river basins.

It wasn't until 8 p.m., when many Valencians were driving home from work, that the local government sent out an emergency alert warning of the floods and advising people to stay inside.

By then, many residents – especially in the southern outskirts of Valencia city – were stuck in their cars and homes.

In some places, a year's worth of rain fell in eight hours, producing walls of water that bust the riverbanks, sweeping away everything in their path.

More than 220 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 80 are still missing.

The number, though, is likely to climb much higher as the state only tallies people reported missing whose family members have provided biological samples for identification.

On Saturday, tens of thousands marched through Valencia, demanding the resignation of regional government leader Carlos Mazon after one of Europe's worst natural disasters in decades.

It is up to the local government in Spain to issue emergency alerts, yet local media quoted Valencia's interior minister, Salomé Pradas, as saying she wasn't even aware a system existed to send alerts to citizens' phones until that afternoon.

More rain

Many regions in Spain are now bracing for more heavy rain in a new test for the system.

On Wednesday, AEMET issued a red alert for Málaga and Tarragona, warning of torrential rains and possible flooding.

The new alerts are also affecting parts of the Valencia region, Catalonia, Murcia, the Balearic Islands and Andalusia, according to national news reports.

Experts say that even the most sophisticated forecasting models and advanced early warning systems are useless if the information is not communicated clearly, on time, and in a way that lets citizens understand how to stay safe.

Ensuring that early warning systems work is becoming ever more urgent as extreme weather events become more frequent and intense in a fast-changing climate.

"When the climate changes, neither the infrastructure, nor the knowledge, nor the education given to people are useful any more because we are dealing with infrastructure and knowledge that are no longer suited for the climate we now have," said Juan Bordera Romá, a deputy with the Valencian opposition party Compromis.

Policy behind the climate curve

Europe risks overwhelming damage from climate-driven disasters as the continent warms faster than any other region in the world.

A rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution, a global team of scientists that examines the role of climate change in extreme weather, found that rainfall in Valencia was about 12% heavier and twice as likely than it would have been in the pre-industrial climate, which was 1.3°C cooler.

Extreme heat is becoming more frequent and rain patterns are changing, making downpours increasingly severe, according to the latest report from the European Environment Agency (EEA).

The Mediterranean, being semi-enclosed, is warming faster than any other marine region in the world, leading to heavier rainfall as warmer air can hold more water.

"The pace of climate change is so high that the policy developments cannot follow," said Julie Berckmans, European climate risk assessment expert at the EEA.

Putting in place effective early warning systems is key to preparing Europe for its hazardous future, she said.

In extreme weather such as flooding, people need timely information, but they also need to understand what a warning actually means, she explained.

That doesn't only apply to citizens, but also to governments and first responders, including civil protection units that need to assess and analyse weather alerts with speed.

Berckmans said the responsibility to issue those alerts lies with the weather agencies, while the task of alerting citizens mostly falls on local governments: a disconnect that may have hindered smooth and clear communications in Valencia.

Weather agencies and local governments "need to work together on how to understand the data that is coming in, instead of just providing and receiving," she said.

EEA's analysis of the extreme floods that hit Germany and Belgium in 2021, which killed more than 200 people and caused 44 billion euros ($47 billion) in damages, found a systemic failure of early warning systems.

"The cause of that failure was the fragmentation of institutional responsibilities and constraints with data- sharing," said Berckmans.

Poor public awareness and preparedness also play a role.

Countries such as the United States and Japan, which have more experience with extreme weather, tend to have a risk management procedure in place.

While national climate risk assessments are increasingly used to inform policy across Europe, society's preparedness is still low, she said.

Communicating risks

Even if alerts reach citizens on time, people need to understand the risk, said Bapon Fakhruddin, who set up the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System after the tsunami in 2004.

"As human beings we always calculate the risk ... if I don't find a fear inside me, I'll not listen to you. Or if I don't trust you, I'll go to another source of information," he said, explaining how it is only when the two match that a person feels a genuine sense of alarm.

He believes this vital one-two punch is often overlooked in the design of early-warning systems.

During the 2021 floods in Germany, of those who were warned, 85 % did not expect very severe flooding and 46 % reported a lack of situational knowledge on protective behaviour.

If people don't have any recent memory of a disaster, they often think that they are safe, explained Fakhruddin.

In Germany's Baden-Württemberg, where four people died in heavy flooding in June, the biggest challenge was reaching people "in a heterogeneous and highly individualised society with different lifestyle habits (only radio listeners, smartphone users, etc.) with warning messages and recommendations for action," a spokesperson from the state's Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Local Government told Context by email.

According to Fakhruddin, the design of early warning systems should be needs-based rather than top-down.

Yet, most high-income countries don't go to the community to assess their needs, working instead on the premise that people are educated and understand whatever information they are given.

"We just assume that people will know how to take appropriate action, and we don't address the diversity within a community."

Improving the visualisation and maps showcasing different levels of risks in different areas – and how they change over time as new forecasts emerge – is also key.

"Do we actually have visualised maps showing that this area is going to be flooded tomorrow, but that another one will be flooded in three days? This kind of mapping is still missing even though the technology is available."

($1 = 0.9330 euros) 

(Reporting by Natalie Donback; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.)