Mejoras en el paradigma del manejo de la gestión del riesgo en los parques nacionales volcánicos de Costa Rica, entre el año 2000 y el 2020

Costa Rica is known worldwide as a tourist mecca. As of 1955, almost all the major volcanoes began to be declared national parks, stopping the human expansion and exploitation in those areas, while several parks have been exposed to the eruptive activity of the five historically active volcanoes. Parks are subject to tourism and thus to the danger that they may be affected or lost in human lives. The death of an American tourist and its Costa Rican guide in the year 2000, as well as the sudden eruption of the Poas in 2017, coupled with the persistent eruptive activity of Turrialba for more than 10 years, were the mechanisms of four major changes in the Management and safety of the Costa Rican Volcanic Parks: a) The generation of the decree to restrict the use of land around the Arenal in 2001 and its updating in the 2006, b) the improvement of volcanic monitoring systems in real time, c) the construction of volcanic ballistic protection screens in the viewpoint of Active crater of the Poas volcano in 2018 and controlled management measures; and the construction of volcanic bomb protection screens in Turrialba in 2018, for the personnel that attends the communications towers, the volcanologists and technicians specialized in surveillance Volcanic, and d) the preventive and information labels in several volcanic parks. Previously, in the Irazu volcano, the ICE had already built in 1964 a bunker so that the volcanologists and guards could make geophysical and volcanological observations. This bunker is located within the first five temporary observatories in the world and within the first -if not the first- in the American continent and in the world to build a work of protection of this type. It will discuss some reasoning (advantages and limitations) inherent to this type of structures and regulations, within the delicate balance of management of risk control in tourist volcanoes. All of this is part of the National Risk Management Policy (2016-2020).