General Méndez: “It is the first drill in the world that has been done without spending a single peso.”
Taken from Diario Libre
SANTO DOMINGO.- With 680,000 people registered, the director of the Emergency Operations Center, Juan Manuel Méndez, reported that everything is ready for the National Earthquake Drill this Wednesday, October 20, starting at 10:00 a.m.
All government institutions, schools, businesses, and families will join this initiative, which aims to implement the Earthquake Contingency Plan developed in 2009 and, in turn, strengthen preparedness and response to the occurrence of this phenomenon.
To conduct this drill, the institution did not incur significant financial losses. General Méndez explained that they only invested 10,000 pesos in the creation and distribution of manuals, so they did not need to request funds from the President's office.
“The institutions have contributed their logistics. We, as the Emergency Operations Center, have spent 10,000 pesos on some manuals that we need to distribute to the media and some institutions, and then everything else is digital. Not a single peso has been spent here; this is a matter of will… it is the first drill in the world to be done without spending a single peso,” he said.
The simulated earthquake will take place at 10:00 a.m., will have its epicenter in Santiago with a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter Scale, and will generate a tsunami alert, which will later be discontinued.
Evacuations will be carried out in participating public and private institutions and homes following the protocols established in the contingency plan.
All fire stations across the country will sound their sirens. The COE team will conduct a walkthrough to oversee the evacuation process of the Juan Pablo Duarte government building, better known as El Huacal.
Simultaneously, the evacuation of the National Police Palace will take place.
The exercise will then move to the Olympic Stadium, where a mobile hospital will be set up. At midday, the process will continue at the Ministry of Defense to simulate a search and rescue exercise in a collapsed building.
At 4:00 p.m., the simulation will take place at the Metalera Nigua company in Nigua, San Cristóbal province, where there will be a spill of a hazardous substance.
Among the institutions supporting the drill are the Administrative Ministries of the Presidency, Defense, Interior and Police, and Education, as well as the National Office of Seismic Evaluation and Vulnerability of Structures and Buildings, the National Geological Service, the National Seismological Center, the National Council of Private Enterprise, the National Council for Disability, the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the National Police, the Association of Industries, the Dominican Municipal League, the governorships and mayoralties, Arcoíris, and the Loyola Polytechnic Institute, among others.
