In order to prepare the Dominican population on how to respond to an emergency situation, the central government will carry out this coming Wednesday, October 20, the simulation of an earthquake, whose epicenter will be the city of Santiago.
This contingency mechanism, which will be carried out on the instructions of President Luis Abinader, was announced during a press conference headed by the Minister of Administration, José Ignacio Paliza and the director of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), retired Major General Juan Manuel Méndez, where it was additionally informed that the simulation will also generate a tsunami alert.
Both Minister Paliza and the COE director, Juan Manuel Méndez García highlighted the concern of President Luis Abinader that the population be prepared to respond to sudden occurrence events, and in that order, urged the population to join in with prior preparation through the agency’s website coe.gob.do and the social networks COE_rd.
Méndez García detailed that they have planned to work on a scenario in which information will be generated on partial and total collapse of buildings, places cut off from communication, evacuations throughout the country, people trapped, evictions to meeting points in industries, hotels and hospitals.
In addition, traffic interruption due to the collapse of pedestrian bridges, overpasses and fallen signs, rupture and fall of electric transmission lines, explosions of fuel stations, water supply cuts and generalized chaos among the population in urban areas. Likewise, there will be reports of fires in industrial and urban areas, the latter will allow the implementation of hazardous materials management teams.
A digital information campaign on this drill will be launched as of Wednesday.
