At 10 in the morning this Tuesday, the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, led a meeting of the technical table of the Valparaíso Region made up of the presidential delegate of Valparaíso, Sofía González, and representatives of Senapred, Carabineros, the Navy, Sernageomin and the MOP.

The objective was to measure the damage that the rains could generate in the area. The authorities’ concern was particularly about the situation of Viña del Mar and Quilpué, which in February were hit by the fires that left 134 dead and material damage that has not yet been recovered. In fact, there are victims who are still living in tents.

The estimate early yesterday was that the area would be affected by rain, thunderstorms and winds of up to 40 kilometers per hour.

Faced with the possibility of a new emergency, The Regional Presidential Delegation of Valparaíso established a contingency plan in the areas affected by the fires. This would be through monitoring in those sectors, where there would be preventive patrols by the Carabineros, the Army, the Armed Forces and municipal teams.

But despite the contingency plan prepared, the rains this Tuesday did affect families who are still going through an emergency situation.

Andrea Varas, leader of one of the committees in Villa Independencia in Viña del Mar, accuses her precarious situation. “There are several ROOF houses that are flooded for now. Between six committees we are more than 160 families, imagine the number of people who are flooded,” she says.

From TECHO they assure that until Tuesday afternoon their team identified 14 homes with leaks due to filtration in the ground because they were not installed. “To date we have 527 emergency homes built and 184 under construction. However, as soon as the rains started, the teams stopped construction work to monitor the status of the emergency homes,” they report.

Varas assures that there are neighbors who did not even manage to move into the house they were building and it flooded during the day. “My mother still hasn’t moved into her house, which was given to her by a private individual, and she also flooded,” she says. The situation of leaks has also been experienced in some emergency homes.

The Delegation recognizes that there are particular cases that today are once again experiencing an emergency situation. But they assure that the frontal system was confronted effectively.

“The region has behaved quite well, except for particular situations that have been addressed directly through the teams on the ground in coordination with the municipality. For this reason, we want to call on citizens to continue paying attention to the instructions that may be given by the authorities and to continue taking care of ourselves in the coming hours, since low temperatures are expected,” they say from the office of delegate Sofía González.

The authority, in turn, states that they have been “in the 15 areas that have been determined with different teams, also together with Carabineros de Chile and the municipalities to be able to attend to the needs that may arise from the territory, especially having risks of leaks that may occur in emergency housing that has been installed, as well as the possibility that there is some type of mass removal, which has not happened up to the minute.”

For his part, the regional director of Senapred, Christian Cardemil, points out that “the initial evaluation indicates that everything has been within the level of control by the communal authority,” while emphasizing that the population “follow the instructions issued by the authority and be able to adopt self-care and self-protection measures.” compared to this last remaining period of this frontal system.”

Regarding the emergency housing provided by the government, Senapred indicates to Third that there was 65.6% progress, which translates into 1,444 homes. However, its beneficiaries have previously accused the deficiency in its infrastructure.

In February of this year, up to that date, the allocation of subsidies to 735 families in Biobío was recorded, of which 162 homes were completed or in progress, which corresponded to 22% progress in works.

Complications due to the rains have also been seen in the southern sector of the country, recalling the fire that affected the commune of Santa Juana and Nacimiento, in the Biobío Region more than a year ago.

From the Municipality of Santa Juana, Edison Fonseca, head of the Department of Disaster Risk Management, points out that in the commune there have been road cuts and electrical support due to the burned trees as a result of the fire: “We have had a lot of fallen trees burned, as the territory that was burned is very large (there are thousands of hectares), and roads that are public and neighborhood pass in between. That has also caused the power lines to be cut.”

In addition, Fonseca points out that there are sectors where electricity did not arrive for a week. The Frontel company had to transfer brigades from other regions to be able to provide support in the commune, given the multiple points of road and electrical network cuts.