BarcelonaThe devastating floods experienced by Valencia a week ago have reopened the debate on flood risk management in our country, which has lived for centuries with this common weakness in all areas with a Mediterranean climate. Despite having relatively short rivers, the Catalan territory has a climatic and geographic mosaic that makes it particularly vulnerable to episodes like the one of the last few days, with frequent torrential rains, streams and torrents that travel a short distance, but that experience sudden floods and rivers that flow into or pass through the main urban areas.
This vulnerability can be explained because to the risk of flooding we must add the exposure to the force of the water of hundreds of thousands of people, economic activities and infrastructure. Specifically, 15% of urban areas and nearly 10% of the population of Catalonia are in a flood zone and have to live with the possibility of receiving the impact of torrential rains that experts assure that every time they will be more intense due to the progressive increase in the temperature of the planet.
The delimitation of flood zones is based on the areas that can be flooded in a return period of 500 years, which implies that the probability of flooding is 1 in 500; that is to say, of 0.2%. This may seem like a very unlikely event, but it is the same as many of the areas near Valencia that were flooded last October 29. Currently, however, there are many activities that are carried out within these already known flood zones because in recent decades works and urban planning projects have been carried out that have turned their backs on this risk.
Status of WFPs in the municipalities of Catalonia
Only in municipalities where it is necessary to have it
Between these flood zones we find a good part of the urban fabric of cities such as Girona, Vilassar de Mar, El Prat de Llobregat or Tortosa. Almost all the industrial estates in the city of Barcelona located on the Besòs side of the city, the entirety of the Ebro delta or shopping centers such as the Splau de Cornellà de Llobregat or part of La Maquinista, in Barcelona, between others But there are also essential infrastructures and equipment such as Bellvitge Hospital, El Prat Airport, the train stations of municipalities such as Sant Boi de Llobregat, Balaguer and Malgrat de Mar or the Mercabarna food distribution center, which includes hundreds of ‘companies and that it is crucial to supply food to millions of people.
These are just some of the examples in our country, but there are hundreds of facilities vulnerable to the risk of flooding located directly in flood zones such as health centers, schools or nursing homes, which, as we have seen recently, serve people which are particularly vulnerable in the event of a flood. A glance at the Civil Protection maps also allows you to see how other key facilities are located in flood zones, including more than 200 schools and universities such as the Cappont University Campus, next to the Segre River in Lleida. As for the hospitals, only the one in Bellvitge has spaces within flood zones, although others such as Hospital Josep Trueta in Girona or Hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Martorell are close to these areas.
A new map of flood zones
Faced with this situation, the Government has launched a plan to thoroughly review the protection model against possible floods. This Tuesday, the spokeswoman for the Catalan executive, Sílvia Paneque, explained that the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) will be tasked with completing the map of the flood zones in Catalonia and having it ready during the first half of next year. It will be based on this map that the Government will take the relevant measures to guarantee the safety of citizens; measures among which, Paneque has admitted, could be the “transfer, elimination or reduction” of those activities that cannot protect themselves from floods.
The professor of the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Barcelona (UB) Carme Llasat, who since 1996 has directed the Group for the Analysis of Adverse Meteorological Situations, defends that the legislation needs to be thoroughly revised. In conversation with the ARA, he raises the need, for example, to prohibit nursing homes or centers with people with reduced mobility in basements in flood zones. He also questions whether it would not be necessary to deconstruct or relocate campsites such as those between Malgrat de Mar and Blanes, at the mouth of the Tordera.
Llasat also regrets that until now little attention has been paid to the risk of flooding in some areas of Catalonia such as the Maresme, which has suffered more than 150 episodes of flooding – more or less severe – since 1900, and underlines that it is essential that all municipalities with flood zones have a municipal Civil Protection plan to deal with them. Precisely, this Tuesday the Government has announced that it will allocate 20 million euros to ensure that all Catalan municipalities have a valid and up-to-date civil protection plan, duly approved and implemented, over a period of two years. Likewise, the Ministry of the Interior has been tasked with reviewing the action protocols for disasters and, if necessary, amending the regulations.
The impact of climate change
The current hazard and flood risk maps were mostly approved in 2020, after being drawn up in 2019, but the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) is currently carrying out a reassessment of cartography to adapt them to the context of the current climate crisis. In fact, the current Flood Risk Management Plan (PGRI) already incorporates studies that assess the effect of climate change on floods, which in some cases foresee an increase in the risk of flooding in areas that at they are now considered a priority due to their risk of flooding.
Specifically, the PGRI identifies as priority action areas the Muga and Mugueta basins, the Maresme streams and the metropolitan ones, the Tordera basin, the Ter-Daró basin, the Garraf streams basin, the basins of the Costa Brava and the Besòs basin. According to these calculations and studies, the INUNCAT plan obliges all municipalities at risk of flooding to draw up civil protection plans, but as explained by the ARA, 237 municipalities have expired and 60 have not yet drafted one never Palafolls, in the Maresme, is one of the municipalities that has not yet approved a civil protection plan, despite having suffered the effects of the Tordera overflowing during the Glòria storm of 2020, which destroyed the bridge that connects Blanes and Malgrat de Mar .
Source: www.ara.cat
