The Comité para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (Cogrid, the disaster risk management committee) decided to allocate 2% of the Región Metropolitana (the Santiago metropolitan region) emergency budget to buying two weather radars, according to Diario Financiero. The decision follows the mudslide that hit Las Condes.
President José Antonio Kast authorized the use of those funds. Because they are regional resources, the purchase requires approval from the metropolitan Gobierno Regional (GORE, the regional government).
That is where the problem lies. Governor Claudio Orrego said they will evaluate the initiative once the Ministerio del Interior (Interior Ministry) "defines a policy for the whole country and commits central government resources". He added that regional governments can supplement those funds, but not replace them.
According to the outlet, Bolivia and Chile are the only countries in South America without weather radars. These devices emit electromagnetic waves to estimate where it is raining and how heavily, observe storms in three dimensions and anticipate tornadoes.
The presidential delegate for the Región Metropolitana, Germán Codina, said in writing that the priority equipment would be a dual-polarization C-band radar (it uses horizontal and vertical waves to distinguish the type of precipitation), with a range of up to 240 kilometers.
For you, as a Santiago resident, that would mean nowcasting, that is, a forecast covering zero to three hours. According to Codina, it would make it possible to measure a storm's intensity and speed before it reaches urban or Andean foothill areas and to trigger evacuations in time.
Operations would be handled by the Dirección Meteorológica de Chile (Chile's weather service) and the Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC, the civil aviation authority), in coordination with the Servicio Nacional de Prevención y Respuesta ante Desastres (Senapred, the national disaster prevention and response agency). A platform would share the data in real time with local emergency plans in each comuna (municipality). Codina did not give a timeline.
Chilevisión meteorologist Allison Göhler described the current alert network as "very weak". She estimated that a radar could warn of heavy rain 15 to 30 minutes in advance and that the country would need at least 10 units.
Göhler calculated that importing each radar costs between $500 million and $1,500 million, with annual maintenance equal to 10% of that amount. She warned that trained technicians, computers with multiple processing cores and image visualization specialists are also needed.
Meanwhile, the Universidad de Valparaíso is leading, together with five institutions, a project under the Fondo de Equipamiento Científico y Tecnológico (Fondequip, a scientific equipment fund) to buy a mobile C-band radar. Its academic Jorge Arévalo said it would be used to research storms and tornadoes, and that the equipment would arrive before the winter of 2027.
