MEXICAN AUTHORITIES DECLARE READY TO FACE HURRICANE SEASON 2019

This Thursday a simulation was carried out at Cenapred on the hypothesis of a category 5 hurricane off the coast of Guerrero; the rainy and cyclone season begins on May 15.

As a successful, formative and confidence-building exercise, the head of the Civil Protection National Coordination, David León Romero, described the drill carried out this Thursday at the National Center for Disaster Prevention ( Cenapred ), on the hypothesis of a Category 5 hurricane on the coasts of Guerrero.

In this way, the National Emergency Committee declared itself ready to face the rainy and hurricane season that begins on May 15 and concludes on November 30 in the country.

In the simulation of the supposed hurricane "Viridiana", which lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes, 52 specialists from 38 agencies participated in the processing of information, analysis, decision-making and creation of solutions

During the civil protection exercise, two damage assessment and needs analysis reports were issued, two links with the National Center for Communication and Emergencies, and 36 messages were prepared for the coordination of actions.

" During this drill, we particularly had some scenarios of river overflow, collapse of some structures, floods, evacuations in buildings, particularly health, road closures due to bridge collapses, that is, different scenarios that my colleagues and I had to be solving throughout those minutes to be able to provide answers to this table and with it to be able to measure the response capacity of these institutions ”, explained David León Romero.

The head of the National Coordination of Civil Protection highlighted that some areas of opportunity they found to improve care are the use of new technologies for handling and processing information in real time with greater agility and strengthening the communication protocol with the media to avoid rumors or false news on social networks.

He recalled that hydrometeorological phenomena consume 80% of the budget allocated to emergency care, since just last year 214 events were registered, of which 41 were tropical cyclones and of them, 6 touched the country.

source: Excelsior