“DESTROYED DAMS”
Such was the quantity of disinformation during the first two days of the disaster that the Valencia region’s leader Carlos Mazon and fire service chief Jose Miguel Basset felt compelled to intervene.
“They’ve spoken about evacuations, overflowing, the bursting of dams: none of that has been correct, but it has notably interrupted the emergency services’ work,” said Basset.
Popular fury at the authorities for their perceived inaction before and after the devastation led to a search for culprits and another source of misinformation – the government’s alleged “destruction of dams”.
The narrative has existed for a while in Spain without ever being substantiated.
In 2023, the AEMS – Rivers with Life association told AFP that dismantled, disused or ruined dams could cause or exacerbate floods. But Spain has destroyed no large dam in recent years.
Some internet users sprung on the disaster to claim the exceptionally powerful Mediterranean storm that triggered it was the work of “climate geoengineering”, ruling out the influence of climate change which they deny.
However, the science is clear. Neither so-called “chemtrails” – streaks of condensation in the sky left by planes – nor the HAARP project that studies the Earth’s outer atmosphere were behind the storm.
The rainfall was 12 per cent heavier and twice as likely compared to the world before global warming, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists have said.
“Climate change kills and we are seeing it,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said this week, hitting out at the “irresponsible discourse of deniers”.
