The second was the good one. Two months and one day after the resounding failure of the mass transmission of emergency alerts, when only three out of ten mobile phones received the message in Tarragona, Civil Protection repeated the test yesterday in the same province, from the Terres de the Ebro to the Penedès. After solving the technical error, the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior, the result was radically different.
According to the provisional data available to the Civil Protection, almost nine out of ten mobile phones correctly received the alert at eleven in the morning, as announced and planned, with a very loud sound that was automatically activated on the mobile phones and a message that he warned that it was only a test.
The Civil Protection’s own control systems quickly verified that this time the emergency alert had been sent correctly through the mobile phone antennas distributed in Camp de Tarragona, Penedès and Terres de l’Ebre. The alert was sent in a territory with a total population of 1.2 million people.
“In an area like Tarragona, with a high sensitivity to chemical risk, it was absolutely necessary to repeat the test; it’s what the population is asking for”, said Marta Cassany, Director of Civil Protection. Tarragona has precisely led the launch of the system for sending mass alerts to mobile phones for emergencies, available since this winter and now in the testing phase.
What prompted the improvement of information to the population in the event of an accident with a chemical risk was the explosion at the Iqoxe plant in the south chemical park of Tarragona, in January 2020. The incident, prosecuted by the criminally, it left three people dead (two workers and a neighbor), in addition to a serious impact outside the industry and a situation of chaos among the population due to a lack of information on the part of the competent authorities.
The data obtained yesterday in the second test will now be analyzed by Civil Protection, but the provisional information ensures that in the event of a real emergency the population would have been informed massively and immediately. The system is mainly designed to order the confinement of the population after a chemical accident, considered the most effective self-protection measure. Alerts can also be sent in the event of serious floods, large forest fires or a nuclear emergency, although in the latter case the Spanish Government would be the one to direct the operation, with exclusive powers over the power plants.
Until 18:00 yesterday, in the last report made public by Civil Protection, almost 7,000 residents had voluntarily responded to the survey activated by the Generalitat to verify the level of reception of mobile phone alerts. A not inconsiderable number. 87.6% stated that they had received the message correctly.
Having verified the alert system in Tarragona, Civil Protection will carry out the same test in Barcelona this summer or already in the autumn, according to Cassany.
Next to the two petrochemical sites in Tarragona, a network of 500 chemical leak sensors has yet to be installed, one of the Generalitat’s commitments after the explosion in Iqoxe, more than three years ago. Since this is a pioneering system in Europe, Civil Protection has been working for months on the tender for the contract to be able to install the sensors. “There is an obvious technical difficulty”, explained Cassany.
