Officials of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology shared their technical expertise with some 60 employees from various offices and departments of the Makati City government during a two-day workshop at city hall on earthquake awareness and preparedness.
Makati Mayor Abby Binay lauded Phivolcs for helping enhance the city’s capability to mitigate the impact of a strong earthquake and cope with its aftermath.
The mayor also revealed plans to modernize and upgrade Makati’s disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) facilities and equipment.
“We need to upgrade our weather monitoring system, the CCTVs in our command center, and even our search and rescue facilities,” DRRM Office officer-in-charge Richard Raymund Rodriguez said.
During the first session of the City Council last Monday, the mayor shared her vision of Makati as a Wifi City, where the presence of fiber-optic internet connections in the city will be optimized. She said CCTVs in the different barangays can be interlinked with the command center CCTV network at the city hall so the authorities can respond faster to emergencies or even crimes.
Day one of the workshop was dedicated to understanding earthquake hazards and risk assessment, and learning about the institute’s warning system and preparedness activities.
Dr. Renato Solidum, Phivolcs director, tackled DRRM and the roles of his agency and the Department of Science and Technology in earthquake-related concerns and programs.
Other Phivolcs resource speakers on the first day included supervising science research specialist (SRS) Jeffrey Perez who facilitated map familiarization and also talked about the West Valley Fault in Makati; SRS Charmaine Villamil who discussed the earthquake hazards in Makati and Phivolcs warning tools and warning products; and information officer Melissa Mae Tamayo who lectured on family and community preparedness in “How safe is my house?”
The second day of the workshop on Friday focused on familiarization and enhancement of earthquake sector plans and protocols. The city government invited the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council to present the National Disaster Response Plan and the Metro Manila Development Authority for its Metro Oplan Yakal Plus. The Makati DRRMO also presented the Makati City Earthquake Contingency Plan.
Workshop participants included one representative each from the offices and departments, except for those directly involved in earthquake preparedness. These are the Engineering Department, DRRMO, Office of the Building Official, and the Makati Public Safety Department, which sent two to five representatives each.
Makati is known for being the first LGU in the country to craft a risk-sensitive land use plan and corresponding zoning ordinance. These development tools earned the approval of the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board in 2013.
In 2014, Solidum cited Makati as the “most prepared city in Metro Manila against geological hazards, including an earthquake.”