DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

It would be hard to find someone so dedicated to a cause as retired general Juan Manuel Mendez Garcia, the head of the Center for Emergency Operations (COE). Mendez Garcia was just honored for his 20 years as the head of the Dominican agency charged with handling all of the emergency situations that occur on an island that sees so many different natural and human disasters.

The Dominican Republic has 14 major seismic fault lines, and at any time one of these might shake the nation. The Dominican Republic is also in the path of many of the worst hurricanes imaginable, and there is nowhere to go in order to avoid one of these. And then there are the Dominican holidays. These events, Christmas-New Years and Holy Weeks, ware nationwide event that see millions of people going from one place to another, full of rum and beer, and a devil-may-care attitude.

These are the...