The main objective of this study is to identify the representations that the residents of the outskirts of Juiz de Fora living in vulnerable and risk conditions and, technician of the Civil Defense Municipality Department, have been constructing about risk and vulnerability, trying to grasp how such representations constitute themselves between these two groups. According to empirical observations there are diferent representations and practices: the residents dont follow or obey the orientations given by the technicians on how to prevent calamities and how to preserve life. Factors like social inequality and the no effectiviness of social politics, among them the housing politic, makes the risk condition and vulnerability even worse for a large segment of the population and, the Civil Defense appears as a emergency politic adressed to serve this population. It has been adopted the perspective of social representations, and, the qualitative listening approach of the individuals, through semi-structured interviews. With the confrontation of the speeches, the results indicate, that the risk representation has been constructed in a dialect of affirmation of the phenomenon and refusal of it. Valuable aspects intervene in this construction. For the techinicians, to step out of the risk is to guarantee life and, for the population , the vulnerability, in other words, the necessity for survivel overlays the existence of the risk.