public safety
Flooding cleanup continues
| la prensa |
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| deluged: Residents recovering from Friday’s flash floods have called government aid inadequate.1110031 |
Gladis González and her neighbors in El Pailón 137 have gotten used to the usual visit of the waters of the Juan Díaz River.
The river comes to their houses without permission or invitation, but usually gives them enough time to put their furniture in a safe place.
In the past when the water receded, the house was cleaned and everything returned to normal. This was a typical scenario until last Friday, when instead of a slow stream, a raging torrent of water entered their houses, rolling over all of their belongings and giving them no time to save anything.
“I embraced my furniture, because I did not want it to be taken away by the water current,” said Susana Sánchez, a neighbor of Gladis González.
Sánchez, like González, lost everything. Her daughters, Amber, 9, and Melanie,7, both primary school students in La Concepción, were only able to carry their school shoes, as their books and uniforms were carried away by the river.
“We canīt send our kids to school today, they donīt have anything,” Sánchez said.
Last Saturday, residents of El Pailón, watched as crews from the Ministerio de Obras Públicas (MOP) raised their personal belongings, now turned into garbage, to carry them to a landfill in Cerro Patacón.
The same thing happened with 4,294 other residents who, like González and Sánchez, live in the 78 communities affected by flooding Friday.
In order to help those victims, government officials began to deliver donations, though many are not happy with the support being given to them.
Sánchez and González, for instance, complained that government officials did not come to see them, although they said that on the first day of the flooding, staff of Servicio Nacional de Protección Civil (SINAPROC) gave them water and small mattresses.
Luis Francisco Sucre, director of SINAPROC, said that the aid is delivered as it arrives at the collection centers.
Shortages of food, however, have caused people to fight over supplies as they are being delivered.
“This can not be controlled,” said Sucre, while those affected argue that there must be the same control that exists in the delivery of mattresses and water bottles.
While Sanchez, Gonzalez and their neighbors were trying yesterday to return to their daily routine, there are others, such as the 1,600 students of the Ernesto T. Lefevre school in Juan Díaz, that will remain out of school until the cleanup is finished.
Dalis de Almengor, of the Centro Regional de Educación, visited the school yesterday and found all 14 rooms on the first floor covered with mud. Several classrooms lost all of their supplies in the flooding.
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