The heavy rainfall generated in recent days throughout the nation has caused landslides and flooding, causing severe damages and even fatalities.
By La Patilla
Oct 31, 2022
Mr. Ángel Rangel Sánchez, former national director of Civil Protection and consultant in Risk and Disaster Management, explained that the State is to be held primarily responsible for allowing construction in vulnerable areas.
“The rains are not to blame for what is happening. We should be thankful that it rains, the problem is how we have been developing our cities, how governments have been allowing towns, communities, cities to develop without respecting the risk variable. That is to say, the problem of the rain is not the rain itself, but townships, homes, citizens who are exposed to the phenomenon of rain and its consequences without being properly protected or prepared to face it and not be affected,” he pointed out.
He added that if municipal, regional and national governments do not enforce the various laws, regulations and standards for construction in particular areas, then they are “building risk.”
Likewise, he explained that the risk is also generated when very low income people who do not have the necessary resources to acquire their own home, choose to build in spaces near streams or in old riverbeds.
“There are constructions authorized by municipal agencies and there are others that are built by citizens who do not have the resources for proper housing and end up installing themselves in the areas of greatest risk that are closest to these basins. That vulnerability in which the populations put themselves into is what is going to be related to loss and the risk,” he insisted.
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