Colombia: A nation at risk?

In May, a landslide killed at least 94 people in Salgar. It was Colombia’s deadliest natural disaster in five years, and it could have been prevented if public officials had heeded lessons from the past, reports the City Paper.

“The risk assessment of the city already indicated that there was an area that was highly exposed to these type of events,” said Ricardo Mena, the head of the United Nations office for disaster risk reduction in the Americas. “However, in this case, they did not have either the resources or the capacity to actually intervene in that high-risk area, and this is one of the reasons why this situation happened again.” Though the tragedies in Salgar and Gramalote suggest otherwise, Colombia generally manages its seismic risk well.