Alert declarations in the Canary Islands have become a kind of boy who cried wolf, although sometimes, as in the story, the wolf arrives. That is what has happened this time in many parts of the islands, where the ...
Alert declarations in the Canary Islands have become a kind of boy who cried wolf, although sometimes, as in the story, the wolf arrives. That is what has happened this time in many parts of the islands, where the consequences of the storm have been strongly felt.
However, once again, the biggest problem has been in the infrastructures themselves. In fact, that is probably what sets off all the alarms every time weather forecasts predict 30 liters of water per square meter or gusts of wind exceeding 40 or 50 kilometers per hour. That, with adequate roads, ports or constructions, should be easily bearable, without the need to stop the archipelago for it.
However, instead, it has entered a dog-eat-dog situation. And in addition to the islands collapsing when inclement weather arrives, they also stop, at least in part, in the face of alerts that ultimately amount to nothing. A good example of this was what happened a couple of weeks ago in Lanzarote, and even what happened on Wednesday afternoon.
When the sky had not even clouded over in Arrecife, classes and extracurricular activities scheduled for that afternoon were suspended and the courts were emptied at 2 p.m. due to the orange alert, following instructions from the Government of the Canary Islands, which ordered the evacuation of public buildings. And protecting children, although it may sometimes seem excessive, because weather predictions are sometimes not very accurate, or do not even seem as worrying as to suspend classes, may still be understandable. But when it is ordered to evacuate public buildings, while the common workers remain in their posts, it is inevitable to wonder if the officials do not get wet like the others.
And the thing about saving the children first in a shipwreck was clear. But now, it seems that women, with the conquests of gender equality, have given up their preferred place to public workers.
In this case, of course, it is not their fault, but the administration's. Even, in the Arrecife Courts, some resisted abandoning their work, especially with regard to the Duty Court. And the saddest thing is that while this instruction was given to public buildings, no institution on the island issued the slightest note of warning to the population.
In fact, buildings such as the Cabildo were not even evacuated nor did they know of the existence of that order, because there was practically no one left to warn. And it is that in addition to the storm, any party is also a good reason to give public workers a day off, or reduce their working hours until two in the afternoon, as has happened with Carnival.
It is true that the emergency services were activated and on guard to face what came, but it does not seem right to send public workers home at two in the afternoon and, instead, other channels of communication with citizens fail. Either from the Government of the Canary Islands with the institutions of Lanzarote, or from the latter with the residents of this island.
Obviously, and that is the first thing that should be understood, you cannot stop an island because of the wind or rain, unless we are really talking about a climatological catastrophe. And for this, the first thing to do is to refine the weather forecasts and give urgent solutions to the infrastructures. But in the meantime, either we all get wet or we close the shop.
