The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, reported this Friday that 500 new soldiers – 300 from the Army, 100 from the Air and 100 from the Navy – are already working from 8 a.m. in the Valencian Community and tomorrow “the that are necessary, without any type of limitation of means”. Even the “120,000 men and women” that make up the Spanish Army if necessary.
“The army has been there since day one and it will be there,” the Defense Minister guaranteed in an interview with TVE, in which she acknowledged that the magnitude of the catastrophe caused by the Dana is still difficult to calculate because “there are places where there are vehicles that are on top of each other, with people, families, who may be inside.”
After once again conveying all his solidarity to those affected, Robles stressed that “everything that can be done is being done and will continue to be done”; Since this morning, 500 more soldiers have joined the work carried out since the first day by another 1,205 members of the Military Emergency Unit (UME).
The new soldiers, who come from the Navy, from the third of San Fernando; of the Air Force, the EADA of Zaragoza and the Alcantarilla parachute squadron, and in addition the Army has deployed the military police units of Bétera and the marine cavalry regiment, they are deployed in Utiel, Requena, Ribarroja, Torrent , Paiporta and AlgemesÃ.
And to those 500, the Government is going to “incorporate all those who are necessary depending on the needs” and “where necessary, without any type of limitation of means.”
“Today the absolute and total commitment is that they will be in all localities, with all the power that the Army has, with the 120,000 men and women if necessary, with all the material means”; today there are 1,705, and “tomorrow” they will be “as many as necessary, as long as it takes, as long as it takes.”
However, “it is not so much a problem of the number of soldiers, but of the capabilities depending on what is needed,” the minister made clear, who welcomed the fact that yesterday the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, “was aware of the importance of the Army” and demand their presence.
The missions that the Army has ahead of it are many, from “helping unearth people who may be in basements or on ground floors” to “helping bail out water in many places” and opening roads to allow transportation so that they can reach food and water to certain populations that are “absolutely isolated.”
But “people don’t think that the Army will arrive and everything will be solved” because there are places where the situation is “absolutely impassable,” he concluded.