Screens, connections, live maps and 3D reconstructions of recovery work in Valencia. The deployment is complete at the Jaume I base in Bétera, where the emergency command post of the Armed forceslocated about 20 kilometers from Valencia, and from where the troops of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) monitor in real time what is the status of ground zero of the DANA.
The catastrophe, more than 30 days later, continues to devastate the neighbors, who are trying to make their lives can return to normal as soon as possible. But on the ground, the truth is that there is still “a lot to do” and “a lot of infrastructure to work on,” he details. 20 minutes Salvador Romonchief commander of the third battalion of the UME, who received this newspaper precisely from the central command post.
There the military works with various tools and indicators to face that long-awaited recovery. “We have several screens; the positioning viewer is where we see the positioning of all our fire engines and all those people who run a means of communication that positions them. This way we can see in real time where they are in the emergency,” explains Romón.
Another of the most notable instruments are the 3D images that the troops take on the ground on how reconstructions evolve of infrastructures. Among them, for example, the Ribarroja bridge, whose reopening, Romón assures, is scheduled for mid-December: “Although it takes less time to put up the bridge structure, it needs some subsequent work to adapt to the roads so that it be viable.”
Along with these two tools is the Valencian Community’s own 112 display, a system that is in fact used throughout the year and with which you can have real-time knowledge of any incident that is reported in the region. Through Google Earth, the UME also controls where all the media that work in the areas that were hardest hit on October 29 are distributed.
“If there is a particular incident, we can go directly to the middle and to that area and see if something is really happening or nothing is happening, if an incident is being covered or not…”, details the commander, who explains that They work based on a color code that categorizes the media among those of the Military Unit, or those who belong to the Firefighters personnel.
Added to all of this is the information that social networks can contributewhich is why from this command post all publications related to the emergency are displayed on several screens, from information provided by the authorities in their respective X accounts, formerly Twitter, even images or photographs that followers and meteorology fans can publish and that can serve as a reference for the UME.
This entire command post works, as Romón says, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. They do so, thus, from a center that has been established as the “base of all the Armed Forces” when it comes to coordinating all those working on the tragedy. And they do it, too, without rest: “Right now the deployment of the Armed Forces is focused on DANA.”