Government announces plan for mandatory evacuations in emergency

this Minister of the Interior Carolina Toha, Announce The government will submit a bill to Congress that would make it mandatory to comply with evacuation instructions during emergencies or disasters and impose sanctions on people who comply with the order.

“We spoke this morning with the President of the Republic and yesterday with the Secretary of Agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela, and the government has decided to send a bill to Congress, and we will discuss it quickly.” Establish a legal obligation to comply with evacuation instructions and impose consequences for those who do not comply,” Toha said.

Minister says evacuation has become ‘complex’ Because despite receiving alerts from the Emergency Alert System (SAE), people still refused to leave their homes.

As an example, he mentioned a group of people who did not want to leave their property in the O’Higgins area this Friday, despite receiving an emergency message.

“Despite the technical instructions, people don’t want to leave this place,” The Minister of Interior commented, referring to similar situations in the metropolitan area, especially in the town of Talagant, “We also faced similar situations of difficulty in evacuation there.”

He added that at times like these, “The security teams, the police, the authorities have to distribute their energy to all the places where there is an emergency, sometimes they have to stay for hours in places where they have been ordered to evacuate, and we cannot get people to comply with this instruction.”

It is in such situations, he said, that “legal support can help improve enforcement and ensure that evacuations are carried out in a timely manner to protect the people themselves”.

“Our goal is not to force people to do something that is not in their best interest, but to do what is in their own interest and safety as dictated by the security team,” he said.

Minister Dongha noted that the bill to determine mandatory evacuation in emergency situations will be processed after the return of the regional week (equivalent to the first week of July).