Versión en Español
Dedicated, with my heartfelt condolences, to the families of those who died in the tragedy of Las Tejerías
It seems incredible that we Venezuelans still have to mourn the dead of a tragedy that occurred this past weekend in Las Tejerías, Aragua State, due to the same causes that originated the Vargas disaster. But we must not forget that we are still in the "revolution" that hid for political reasons what was happening in the central coast of Venezuela in 1999, showing its contempt for the lives of Venezuelans.
Indeed, even El País of Spain, on December 27, 1999 headlined: "The Venezuelan Government did not attend in time to the main recommendation made last December 15, during the development of the constitutional referendum, by the Venezuelan Civil Defense Directorate in view of the imminence of the worst catastrophe in its history: to declare a state of national emergency, a measure that would have probably led to the evacuation of the coastline devastated by the worst floods ever suffered by Venezuela" (see in Spanish Chávez disregarded a Civil Defense warning to declare a flood alert, in https://elpais.com/diario/1999/12/28/internacional/946335608_850215.html),
The then Constituent Representative, Jorge Olavarría, qualified this behavior as "criminal negligence": "Chávez tries from the first moment to minimize the crisis knowing its magnitude. Negligence gives grounds to initiate a procedure before international instances" (see article from El País, referenced above), and which Olavarría reaffirms in his own article: "Rangel said nothing in relation to the President's sarcastic disqualifications of professional discredit against journalist Jane Bussey of the Miami Herald, José de Jesús Aznárez of El País of Madrid and Joaquín Ibarz of La Vanguardia of Barcelona who truthfully reported about the criminal negligence with which the President, handled the coastal tragedy in its first and most critical days, ignoring the recommendations made by Civil Defense to declare a state of emergency and send the National Guard to the devastated area to prevent the looting that occurred as a consequence of this negligence" (see in Spanish Jorge Olavarría, The Great Pimp, in https://www.angelfire.com/vt/almallanera/images/derechad.html).
However, apparently following the same criminal negligence, inherited from the late Galactico of 1999, the Governor of the State of Aragua, Karina Carpio, the day after the disaster, whipped anyone who thought of transmitting any video of the tragedy that occurred: "To all those people who are passing, who are transmitting videos, Dantesque images of what could have happened here, that we know that there is indeed damage, but we are called to conscience and not with those videos that are awakening anguish in our community" (see in Spanish La Patilla, The surprising statements made by the chavista governor of Aragua after the disgrace in Las Tejerías, in https://jvlaq.gigbitz.com/2022/10/09/declaraciones-gobernadora-chavista-aragua-las-tejerias/).
But as the article published by La Patilla indicates, it was precisely through these videos that Venezuela and the world learned of what was happening in Las Tejerías, thus alerting the rest of the population and the State of Aragua in general: "What Carpio apparently does not know is that it was thanks to the images disseminated through social networks by the inhabitants of Las Tejerías and their families, that it was possible to alert about the tragedy that occurred there on Saturday night, while the authorities remained silent about what was happening" (emphasis added).
How unfortunate that in 1999 there was no such instant video and photo transmission technology in the hands of everyone, which could have alerted the thousands of people affected to leave Vargas, something that was the direct responsibility of the Chávez government. Had this been so, perhaps there would not have been thousands of deaths in Vargas in 1999, as a result of the criminal negligence of Hugo Chávez Frías, and which I imagine must have been in his column of atrocities pending to be cancelled, when presenting himself before the Creator.
As you will see, this pattern of criminal behavior has been deeply embedded in the DNA of the regime since its foundation, in the fanatic followers of this red-red madness, such as the current Governor of the State of Aragua. Hiding the misfortunes and/or minimizing them is the permanent behavior, as if what is happening in Venezuela were no longer a calamity due to their mere presence in power.
But this is not the worst thing. The worst thing is that they have learned NOTHING from the tragedies that have happened before with mudslides, such as in Vargas in 1999, and from the multiple recommendations written in reports and studies, and presented by commissions that were set up to find out what happened there so that this would not be repeated anywhere in Venezuela.
As those Venezuelans who still have memory of the misfortunes of Castro-Chavismo-Madurism will remember, in the year 2000 the Unique Authority of the Vargas State Area (AUAEV) was created to make possible the necessary studies to "attend to this type of catastrophes and protect the population". This is so stated by Carlos Genatios, whose head as Coordinator of this Authority, was appointed by Hugo Chávez to present solutions.
Carlos Genatios, in a report presented to the National Academy of Engineering and Habitat in May 2010, stated that: "The AUAEV had neither the power, nor the financial resources, nor the capacity to build, and had to limit itself to studies and projects. As coordinator of the AUAEV, I never had in my hands any kind of resources from foreign aid. I repeat, never. I only administered, with very strict criteria, the resources from the regular budget to carry out studies" (see in Spanish Carlos Genatios, Vargas: Disaster, project and reality, in http://www.acading.org.ve/info/publicaciones/TRABAJOS_INCORPORACION/TI_CARLOS_GENATIOS1.pdf).
Indeed, the Unique Authority did not have the budget for the execution of the necessary works recommended by it to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, but the National Executive did, through an entity created for that purpose, called CORPOVARGAS. Genatios affirms years later (2003): "This week I visited once again the basins and affected areas of the coast. For the brevity of this space, I will only refer to the torrent control works. I was able to observe important variations in the initial designs made by AUAEV. Steel-reinforced concrete works have been replaced by gabion works. In some situations this does not increase the risk to the population, but in several it does. In other words, the change in criteria followed by CORPOVARGAS now implies a greater risk for the inhabitants of the dejection cones" (Annex to the Report presented to the Academy of Engineering and Habitat, Page 155).
From the Genatios Report it can be deduced that Vargas is still in danger, just as the lives of the rest of Venezuelans are still in danger if the current way of administering the resources that belong to all Venezuelans continues. CORPOVARGAS, as many other entities of the regime, disappeared with the Venezuelans' money and the serious risk for the population is still intact.
Experts who have worked on the Vargas issue, such as Carlos Genatios, have proposed solutions that already exist in the world to this type of recurring problem in our country. The tragedy of El Limón (1987), Vargas (1999), Las Tejerías now in 2022, show that governments have not taken seriously or cared about the application of resources to the risks of potential disasters in the States.
An important proposal was presented by Dr. Jose Luis Lopez, in his work of Incorporation as a Full Member of the National Academy of Engineering and Habitat (see in Spanish Jose Luis Lopez, Ph.D, Learning from the Vargas disaster, A critical and constructive view on the measures adopted for the mitigation of potential avalanche risk, May 2020, in http://www.acading.org.ve/info/publicaciones/TRABAJOS_INCORPORACION/TI_JOSE_LOPEZ.pdf).
There, Dr. López points out the existence of Monitoring and Early Warning Systems: "Structural measures (dams and canalizations) (which was the solution proposed by Carlos Genatios in Vargas) can only mitigate a part of the risk since total security does not exist. They protect us against an event of a certain return period (usually 100 years), but they do not protect us for larger or less frequent events. This protection also decreases when the dams silt up or deteriorate. For this reason, other measures, which we call non-structural, must be taken to reduce the residual risk. The monitoring and early warning systems constitute a fundamental instrument of the non-structural measures, which allow the population to be warned in advance of the occurrence of a torrential avalanche so that the corresponding preparedness and/or evacuation measures can be taken" (Page 201). (emphasis added).
For the time being, the regime would do well -if it is not too much for them that besides taking videos and photos of what is happening, we demand for the lives of the citizens they are obliged to protect- to install in each risk zone of the country, such as Las Tejerías, a permanent measuring system as described by Dr. López in his dissertation, if they are going to take the real ones of the structural solutions, so that at least people can be evacuated and their lives saved before a tragedy occurs.
Dr. López indicates in his study: "The conclusion of this analysis is that if we had had this tool available for the year 1999, many lives could have been saved, since by day 15 the corresponding point in the graph was so far inside the critical zone that it should have generated maximum alert levels including the evacuation of the population before the occurrence of the disaster on 12/16". We are in 2022 and we still do not have any, neither in Vargas - a tragedy that happened more than 20 years ago - nor in any other place in Venezuela.
All of the above indicates that there have been technical solutions, and invariably also money, at all times, but this has not been enough to save the lives of people exposed to landslides. The definitive solution will come when the citizens of each State decide, through their legitimately elected representatives, that the resources will not be administered or provided by the President and his Ministers, but by the Federal State and Municipal Entities themselves, which are the final mourners of all the tragedies of the citizens, in an Original National Constituent Assembly. The rest will be, and until that does not happen, the chronicle of a criminal negligence foretold...
Caracas, October 11, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario