Alerta Amarilla en Madrid – Yellow Alert in Madrid

A frightening thing happened this morning. I was cleaning my teeth in the bathroom, and as my electric toothbrush broke down, I was able to hear the news on the radio. For some reason my wife listens to the news on AM, so I keep expecting Pathe to announce the World War 2 ceasefire, but instead the Cope announced that Madrid was on Yellow Alert!

Why I thought, A prison break, ETA have managed to get more money from Eroski (in an earlier blog I stated there was no libel law in Spain – lets see), or perhaps Morocco has WMD.

Nope. It is on Yellow Alert because it is a bit chilly. It is on Yellow Alert because early in the morning it was 4ºC. Madrid is on Yellow Alert as a pair of gloves is advisable.

I decided I had to investigate. I remember there being an alert because it was raining, and another because it was windy. I even seem to remember a purple alert (but that could be my imagination), so I investigated as to how these alerts work.

When I looked at the IAEM documentation, it all looks very sensible, alerts from level 0 to level 3 caused by varying factors such as falling satellites, bad storms and earthquakes. There was no colour system though.

Also the presentation available on the Proteccion Civil web page is very nice, good PowerPoint, but not helpful. I need to know whether a Yellow Alert is bad? Where does it go now? Re, Black, Magenta or an off colour puce Alert? When do I go to my embassy? When do I just not care and go and visit he most expensive restaurant as I know that I will not live long enough to pay the bill?

Does anyone have a guide out there?