Solons want safer and stronger evacuation centers More lawmakers are pushing for the establishment of evacuation centers that are strong enough to withstand natural calamities and situated away from waters and landslide-prone areas. Bayan Muna Party-list Reps. Neri Colmenares and Carlos Isagani Zarate filed House Bill 3648 to establish evacuation centers located at a distance safe from waters and landslide-prone areas. The fact that the Philippines is a country often visited by typhoons yearly, the government has to undertake measures while waiting for the completion of a comprehensive program and its eventual implementation, Colmenares said. Colmenares said lives can be saved by ensuring that sturdy and typhoon-resilient, climate change-adaptive evacuation centers are constructed, in the absence of a comprehensive disaster reduction and risk plan. Zarate said some school buildings which were used as evacuation centers during the pre-emptive evacuation in some areas in the Visayas for typhoon Yolanda were also not spared because of the misinformation of a storm surge. As a result, numerous evacuees died in the said school buildings. Schools must not be used as evacuation centers because the childrens education are the most affected especially in situations when things should have started to get normal but families cannot yet vacate the school premises because their houses have not yet been repaired nor constructed, Zarate said. This practice of using schools as evacuation centers has to stop to cushion the impact of calamities and disasters especially on the children, Zarate said. Under the measure, an evacuation center shall be established in every two to three contiguous barangays that is big enough to accommodate the target population. The evacuation centers shall be designed by experts to withstand super typhoons or shall be calamity-resilient and built with sturdy materials. The National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) shall be the lead agency in ensuring that the requirements for such an evacuation center are met. The lead agency shall coordinate with the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in the planning and construction of such facilities. Each location for every evacuation center shall be chosen and prepared by the concerned Local Government Units (LGUs) in coordination with the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB).
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 05:53:23 +0000