Spanish
Santo Domingo.- The director of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), Juan Manuel Méndez García, warned this Friday that the tropical storm Melissa presents an “erratic and unusual” behavior, which makes it difficult to predict its trajectory and extends the effects of the rains over a large part of the country.
During a press conference alongside the Dominican Institute of Meteorology (Indomet), Méndez explained that the phenomenon is advancing irregularly, at a speed of just 4 kilometers per hour, which has allowed its cloud bands to remain longer over the island of Hispaniola.You may be interested in: http://Avenida Dr. Defilló vuelve a la normalidad tras cierre por inundaciones
Méndez pointed out that the main threat is no longer the intensity of the rains, but the extreme saturation of the soils after several days of continuous rainfall.“In my 20 years at the head of the COE, I had not seen an event with this behavior. We are sincerely concerned,” said the official.
According to data from Indomet, in recent days more than 350 millimeters of rain have been recorded in the National District and more than 250 millimeters in San Cristóbal, accumulations that have generated overflows of ravines and failures in the pluvial drainage."When the soils are saturated, everything that falls becomes surface runoff. If before with two or three hours of rain we had floods, now with half an hour we can see the same effects," he warned.
Faced with this situation, the COE reiterated its call to the population residing in areas under red or yellow alert to stay in their homes and avoid unnecessary travel, due to the high risk of flash floods and landslides.
