Javier Marcos, chief general of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), has defended this Saturday the actions of its troops on October 29, the day the catastrophe of the DANAby ensuring that they began to deploy in the province of Valencia at 3:41 p.m.“hours before receiving official orders”, when they saw that “the situation was getting downright difficult.”
“They say that the truth suffers, but does not perish,” the general proclaimed at the beginning of his speech at a press conference. Marcos wanted to show a series of unpublished images with the date of the day of the tragedy “following much information in which agility and speed were called into question of the Armed Forces, in this case the Military Emergency Unit, and even my statements were questioned in which I said that the UME had been there from the first moment.
The head of the EMU wanted to “contrast” this information and statements “with the reality of some images that confirm what the minister has told them on many occasions, and what I have told them on several occasions, words are unnecessary,” he indicated.
Next, Marcos presented a series of images “from two in the afternoon” of the day of the deadly DANA. “Although we were previously aware that the situation was getting worse, at two in the afternoon we learned that the Valencian Community decreed operational situation 1. We had already been alerted for hours. As soon as we see that the situation is getting frankly difficult, much sooner of any elevation to another level, we leave,” he explained.
In this sense, Javier Marcos has detailed that the first vehicle of the UME left the Bétera base “at 3:41 p.m.” and that it took almost two hours to arrive in Chiva. At this point, he has shown some images recorded from one of those vehicles at 6:05 p.m. on the A-3at the height of that Valencian town.
“They are UME vehicles that are found, that in the incorporation to Utiel-Requena, which is the destination they have, anticipating official orders, risking liveswe were rescuing people who were trapped. “They are real images,” described the head of the UME.
“At 6:05 p.m., the UME troops already They had been rescuing people for hours“, Marcos stressed during the broadcast of these images, in which the highway can be seen, completely flooded. “They are testimonies from elements of the UME who recorded it on their own initiative,” he added.
Other images show cars completely damaged and submerged on the A-3 highway. “We pass by those cars checking that there was no one, or that if they were, we could take them out, and we took them all out. Look at the magnitude of what was coming to the Valencian people. We were already more than prepared, with boats, to go to the people,” defended the general.
As detailed, a total of 96 military56 managed to reach the Utiel-Requena area, but the 40 who did not make it had to turn around and during the return journey they were rescuing people who had been trapped on the highway, as well as responding to warnings in Paiporta that they were receiving from CECOPI.
Marcos has continued to show some of the performances of members of the EMU, “anonymous heroes that they do not deserve the information that is being released.” The head of the Unit has defended that his troops “they risked their lives“There are sectors of the population for whom we were late, and yes we were, look at how many, where and doing what,” Marcos concluded, pointing to the screen where said images of the rescues were shown.
Likewise, Marcos has made known what is the “real pulse” of the situation in Valencia this Saturday. “We maintain 8,500 soldiers” on the ground, indicated the head of the UME, who also reported that during this time there have been replacements in the different units, so in total 10,000 soldiers have intervened in that emergency zone.
To this we must add the 2,000 means that also continue to work in the affected area, from helicopters, special intervention vehicles and drones, among others.