The retired general, who coordinated the Dominican response to storms, earthquakes, and pandemics for twenty-one years, is leaving the Emergency Operations Center to assume the executive directorship of the National Institute of Transit and Land Transportation (Intrant), through Decree 551-26, dated August 16, 2026
SANTO DOMINGO. – Juan Manuel Méndez García was born on October 19, 1966 in Pontón, La Vega, and built a four-decade career within the Dominican Republic Army before becoming the public face of the country's emergency management.
He is married and has seven children, according to his biographical profile published on the institutional portal of the Emergency Operations Center (COE).
He joined the Army in 1986 and in an interview given to Revista Contacto in 2025, Méndez García narrated his own journey within the military institution: in 2000 he went to work in Forestry and, with the change of government that year, he became legal consultant to the Presidential Guard until 2003; that same year he rose to colonel and was in charge of the Army's public relations, then the sub-intendency of Transportation and later the legal consultancy of that institution.
Concurrently, as a junior officer, he served as a judge on the Armed Forces Court of Appeals and, later as a colonel, as presiding judge of the National Army War Council with national jurisdiction. In 2004, he transferred to Civil Defense as a military assistant to the director of that agency, a year before assuming leadership of the COE.
He holds a doctorate in Law from the Dominican University of Organization and Methods (O&M) and a postgraduate degree in Civil Law from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), according to his official profile on the COE portal.
He assumed the direction of the Emergency Operations Center on July 26, 2005 and remained in the position, ratified by successive governments of different political leanings, for twenty-one years.
From that position he coordinated the national response to tropical storms Gustav, Hanna, Ike, Olga and Noel, supported joint operations carried out in the country in response to the Haiti earthquake of January 2010 and coordinated with the Ministry of Public Health the management of the cholera and covid-19 crises, according to the COE's own institutional portal.
For his work after the Haitian earthquake he received recognition from the Presidency of the Republic, and throughout his tenure he was decorated with the Juan Pablo Duarte Military Grand Cordon, the highest military distinction in the country.
On August 15, 2020, he was promoted to major general and placed on retirement status, while remaining in his position as head of the COE, according to the institution's official records. In May 2022, President Luis Abinader also appointed him, in an honorary capacity, as Director of Emergency Medical Services.
From COE to INTRANT
By means of Decree 551-26, signed on August 16, 2026, retired Major General Méndez García was appointed executive director of the National Institute of Transit and Land Transportation (Intrant), replacing Milton Morrison, who submitted his resignation from the position he had held since July 2024, as reported by the Presidency of the Republic.
At the COE, he is succeeded by Erdwin Robert Olivares Luciano, who had held the position of Deputy Director of Operations at that entity since February 2010.
Méndez García takes over an Intrant that his predecessor described, in the report corresponding to the 2024-2026 period, as an institution that achieved 24 consecutive months with the highest rating on the Transparency Portal and a triple ISO certification, but which continues to face what Morrison himself described before the Senate as a road pandemic: nearly three thousand annual deaths from traffic accidents.
The new director also inherits the implementation of the National Strategic Road Safety Plan 2025-2030 and a proposed reform to Law 63-17, which regulates traffic and mobility in the country, pending legislative discussion.
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