Melchior blames meteorologists for mispredicting storm Delta

By EFEThe president of the Tenerife Island Council, Ricardo Melchior, blamed the National Institute of Meteorology (INM) this Friday for making a bad prediction of tropical storm Delta, and demanded that the Ministry of the Environment ...

December 9 2005 (20:16 WET)

By EFE

The president of the Tenerife Island Council, Ricardo Melchior, blamed the National Institute of Meteorology (INM) this Friday for making a bad prediction of tropical storm Delta, and demanded that the Ministry of the Environment take the necessary measures to prevent this situation from happening again.

Melchior made this statement during the extraordinary plenary session held by the island corporation to address this issue, in which a joint proposal by the CC and Popular groups was approved, requesting the company Unelco-Endesa to compensate citizens and businesses on the island in their bills for the losses caused by the prolonged power outage.

In addition, the Tenerife Island Council reserves the right to exercise any legal, administrative or political actions it deems appropriate in defense of the rights and interests of citizens, once it receives reports of the actions taken during the storm.

It also demands that the central government publish the ministerial orders and develop the royal decree on island and extra-peninsular electrical systems, which it considers essential to complete the liberalization process of the electricity sector in the islands and for the system operator to "fully assume its functions".

It also asks the Canary Islands Government to carry out an urgent inspection of the state of the high-voltage towers and to insist on the need for maintenance work to which the operator is obliged.

In addition, the Regional Ministry of Industry is requested to report on the audit carried out on the situation of the medium and low voltage network and, if necessary, demand that Unelco-Endesa improve and replace obsolete facilities, as well as determine the possible responsibilities of the company, after hearing from its representatives.

The Tenerife Island Council also wants the Canary Islands Government to develop the processing and coordination of aid together with the central administration as quickly as possible.

Two other agreements were added to these agreements, proposed by President Ricardo Melchior, one of them to request that means be enabled for the National Institute of Meteorology (INM) to provide clear, precise and rigorous data to the bodies responsible for civil protection tasks.

Another point is the one referring to enabling a specific item to alleviate the serious effects caused by Storm Delta in the municipality of Güímar, whose mayor, Vicenta Díaz (PP), also a councilor of the island corporation, thanked "the prompt presence" of the members of the Island Council in the town.

However, the president of the Socialist group in the island corporation, Antonio Martinón, who expressed his support for the point referring to aid to Güímar, considered that with the rest of the agreement CC is trying to divert its responsibility to the central government and warned the nationalists that they cannot attribute to the lack of ministerial orders "the disaster in the electrical infrastructures".

Martinón said that the storm caused an "intolerable" situation and revealed "a very high negligence" for which, in his opinion, the Canary Islands Government is partly responsible, which has the obligation to plan the energy supply in the islands.

Ricardo Melchior disagreed with the argument that the central government has done things well but has also had "negligence", detailed that the intensity of the wind was twice the predictions of the INM and considered that this center does not have data on the island wind conditions or simulation models, which is "serious".

Most read