Residents of several neighborhoods in the Brazilian city of Santa Vitoria in the interior of Minas Gerais state fled their homes and workplaces in panic after hearing a siren warning of a dam failure on the outskirts of the city. As it turned out later, the siren went off due to the inattention of the employee.
Following the disaster prevention schedule that had been worked out several times, residents, as soon as they heard the siren, began to run out of the places where they were and concentrate on the highest points of the city, previously agreed upon in simulacra of a possible tragedy. In the Chaveslandia area, on the outskirts of the city closest to the São Simão hydroelectric dam, no one wanted to stay and check if the warning was real, since the entire area would have been flooded within minutes if the big dam had actually exploded.
Later, with a frightened population still concentrated at survival points and civil protection teams participating in exercises for years, Spic Brasil, the company that controls the dam, publicly apologized for the incident and reassured the population. According to the company, the siren warning of the dam collapse was activated accidentally and there is no risk of a breach or even partial failure, since all monitoring indicators of the hydropower plant are working and indicating normality.
This is the second time in a week that residents of Brazilian cities have fled in panic after a false alarm that a dam or dike had broken. Last week, residents of lower neighborhoods of the town of Canoas in Rio Grande do Sul state, which was partially submerged a month ago by the worst flooding in the region’s history, also fled in despair after a false alarm.
Army soldiers on a humanitarian mission for victims of the storm walked the streets warning that the dam of the main river that feeds Canoas had broken and that everyone should flee as everything would be under water. In fact, the warning was a fake, the origin of which is still unknown and which led to the dismissal of all the military personnel involved.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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