Talagante Mayor Sebastián Rosas accused the government of failing to respond to the emergency at the Ribera del Río settlement, which flooded after the Mapocho River overflowed following heavy rains in the Metropolitan Region.
According to T13, the mayor sent a video from the riverbank. "I am on the bank of the Mapocho River right now, and I have not seen any minister," he said.
Rosas urgently requested intervention by the Ministry of Public Works (MOP) and the General Directorate of Water (DGA), the agency responsible for managing water resources. "The river needs to be channeled; water is still flowing into the settlement, and it is completely flooded," he said. He also invited ministers to visit Talagante in person.
On Thursday afternoon, the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred) issued an evacuation alert for the Ribera del Río settlement. The message reached mobile phones through the Emergency Alert System (SAE) and asked those still in the area to evacuate because of the risk posed by the rising river.
Radio ADN reported that the emergency affects hundreds of families. The sources do not specify the exact number of people affected or whether shelters were opened for evacuated residents.
Senapred's regional director in the Metropolitan Region, Miguel Muñoz, defended the decision not to activate the SAE alert earlier in the municipality. He explained that, when a river rises, the local authority generally requests that the alert be sent.
"In Talagante we had a Green Alert, it was not raining, and the river level was falling; that was the information sent to us from the area," Muñoz said. So far, the sources have reported no response from the MOP or any minister to the mayor's call.
The emergency in Talagante coincided with the mudslide that primarily affected the San Carlos de Apoquindo area in Las Condes on Thursday, where authorities focused their attention that day. According to Rosas, water was still flowing into the settlement when he recorded his appeal.
