Academy questions risk management in Manizales

Although this city is in red alert due to the rainy season, experts still do not know if the causes of this accident are related to a natural event or due to the pooling of water in a 16 inches tube located close to the neighborhood that broke down after two weeks of water suspention.

According to Julian Vélez Upegui, professor and director of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IDEA) in Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Manizales, "one theory is that after a long period of time without water, these tubes formed air bubbles, cracks or any other problem that could have produced the sliding of mod."

After several critics from the inhabitants of this zone, who asserted to different media that water was escaping and that they made several calls to Agua de Manizales without any answer, the Personality of Manizales did not program a technical visitation for detecting the possible causes of this disaster.

Among the debris, people found lost of the integrity of the physic structure (holes), blocked sewers, filtration cracks, and some construction that provoked water concentrations, as the warehouses of Unica Company and a park for children.

The expert in urban environment and professor of Manizales campus, Freddy Leonardo Franco Idarra, explained that "in order to prevent disasters, calls from the community have to be attended, the companies should have gone to verify immediately if there was a problem and if their personal is not available, they must hire more people"

Both researchers asserted that this tragedy, which resulted in 120 affected families, was cause by a bad management of risks, since despite this tragedies cannot be predicted, they can be mitigated.

"there are circumstances such as the instability of the terrain where Manizales is, we cannot do anything about it, but we can locate where the tubes are, and generate alert systems and locate possible emergency zones, especially in neighborhoods built many years ago, which have not had a problem like this before," asserted Franco Idarraga.

"We have a project at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, together with the Municipal Office for Prevention and Attention of Disasters (Ompad) called Environment Monitoring Network for Manizales City, which studies variables such as rain, and rain accumulations and the possible incidence that this have. We cannot predict when disasters may occur, but we generate an alert for the corresponding entity to prevent or mitigate the risk" asserted Valez Upegui.