At least five underpasses in the Guadalajara metropolitan area will be equipped with sensors and alarms to issue alerts when the water levels exceed 15 centimeters.
The move comes three weeks after two people died when their vehicle became submerged in a tunnel on the Guadalajara Periférico (ring road).
David Zamora, Jalisco’s secretary of Infrastructure and Public Works, said the devices should be ready in about two weeks. However, he did not name the underpasses where they will be installed.
Five alarms may not be sufficient. In an investigative report published September 10, EL Informador newspaper said that according to the Instituto Metropolitano de Planeación (Metropolitan Planning Institute), 25 of the city’s 46 vehicular tunnels are “de alta peligrosidad” (highly dangerous).
The Guadalajara daily highlighted several underpasses identified by University of Guadalajara investigators as among the most prone to flooding and the “most risky” in the metro area. These are at Servidor Público and Periférico (where the two fatalities occurred earlier this month), Acueducto and Periférico, Ocho de Julio and Washington, López Mateos and Las Águilas, López Mateos and Patria and the junction with the ITESO university, also by the Periférico.
The Informador report quoted several experts who implored state and municipal authorities to address this issue with greater urgency. José Luis Velázquez, head of Civil Protection at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), said metro-area mayors, “year after year tell us that the problem is solved, that there will no longer be floods, but every year the same thing happens.”