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Calle residencial anegada bajo la lluvia, con rescatistas de chaquetas amarillas avanzando con un bote inflable naranja junto a un vehículo de emergencia
Calle de un barrio con viviendas de bloques anegada tras las lluvias: rescatistas con cascos y chaquetas amarillas cruzan el agua con un bote inflable naranja, sacos de arena protegen una vivienda y un vehículo de emergencia aguarda a la derecha. · Imagen generada para EPM

Dominican COE keeps alerts, warns of floods on saturated ground

The Dominican COE keeps four jurisdictions on yellow alert and 16 on green amid a trough, warns of floods and landslides on saturated soils, restricts the Juan…

--- The context --- A trough left the ground saturated across several Dominican jurisdictions, and that saturation changes the risk even as rainfall eases: the soil no longer absorbs water the same way, and fresh rain can quickly become sudden flooding or a landslide. --- The facts --- The Emergency Operations Center keeps four jurisdictions under a yellow alert and 16 under a green alert because of the trough. Its director, Colonel Erdwin Robert Olivares Lucian, warned that saturated soils could trigger new floods and landslides. --- The positions --- The yellow alert covers the provinces of Monte Plata and San José de Ocoa, the municipal district of Nisibón in La Altagracia, and the municipality of Ramón Santana in San Pedro de Macorís. The director specified that in these last two provinces the alert is focused on specific areas and the rest of their territories remains under green. --- What remains unknown --- A vehicle restriction remains in place on the Juan Pablo II highway, known as the Samaná road, because the waters of the Ozama and Yabacao rivers rose over the roadway in the early morning. Units from the Ministry of Public Works and the General Directorate of Traffic Safety and Land Transport are coordinating measures to keep drivers safe. --- Unanswered questions --- How long will the Juan Pablo II highway stay restricted while the rivers remain over the road? What will the surveys show in the homes that flooded? When can the alerts be lifted if the ground is still saturated? --- EPM analysis --- The human balance reported is encouraging: the director said no lives had been lost and that about two thousand people mobilized during the emergencies had returned to their homes. Residents preventively moved by the Civil Defense to an official shelter also went back, so no displaced people remained. The Housing Ministry is surveying areas where homes flooded, and response institutions are keeping their contingency plans active. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, the return home of the mobilized residents should not be read as the end of the emergency, but as a pause conditioned by the state of the ground. With saturated soils, caution protects more than haste: heeding the call not to cross rivers, streams and ravines with high flows, and staying watchful in flooded zones, is today the measure that separates a safe return from a new episode with families once again exposed to the water.
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