According to data from the Municipality of Quito, some 20,000 inhabitants of the capital are directly at risk because they live on slopes and ravines.
About 100,000 people are exposed in Quito before possible alluvium like the one that on January 31 last ended the lives of 28 people in the La Comuna and La Gasca neighborhoods, and of them some 20,000 directly when their homes were found within the river bed. slopes and ravines.
This was indicated on March 24, 2022 by the Secretary of Security of the Municipality of Quito, Daniela Balarezo, and the advisor Hugo Yépez during a meeting of the mayor of Quito, Santiago Guarderas, with members of the foreign press.
Balarezo pointed out that the most threatened areas are in the basin of the Monjas river and in Caupichoan area in the south of the Ecuadorian capital that is part of the Machángara River, where invasions and irregular constructions are found above or even within the riverbed.
In this sense, Mayor Guarderas regretted that for years there has not been Quito a policy to generate popular housing that would allow the city to have an orderly growth, to prevent invasions on the slopes from occupying risk areas.
The highest municipal authority pointed out that from his institution short, medium and long-term measures have been undertaken to avoid, as far as possible, the recurrence of tragedies such as the recent alluvium.
Thus, the first thing for the Mayor is to clean up the slopes and lastly, the installation of an early warning system with the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is expected to be ready in about four years.
Likewise, Guarderas anticipated that the Municipality of Quito will receive a non-reimbursable loan from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) so that the Metropolitan Public Potable Water and Sanitation Company (Epmaps) of the Ecuadorian capital can carry out work in the streams susceptible to flooding.
“It is an important support,” said Guarderas, who preferred not to detail the amount of the loan, since it is in the final stages of approval by the multilateral organization.
As a result of the intense rains that fell this year, Quito was the scene of a tragic event at the end of February, when the La Comuna and La Gasca neighborhoods were surprised by a alluvium of mud and rocks that rushed down the slopes of Pichincha to take everything in its path, such as vehicles, houses and people. EFE
