The sound of shattering glass, followed by continuous siren and whistle blasts, will signal the start of the 3rd Metro Shake Drill at Quezon City Hall at 4 p.m. on Friday.
Employees and the general public will then be directed to emergency exits by members of the QC Disaster Action Teams organized in each city government, department, and office and assemble at designated assembly areas within the city hall compound.
Fire and rescue services from the Bureau of Fire Protection will simulate firefighting and high-rise evacuation, while the QC Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office will set up an incident command post at Quezon Memorial Circle where most emergency scenarios will be simulated.
Quezon City under Mayor Herbert Bautista has invested heavily on public safety.
“All those infrastructure and hi-tech equipment will be useless if we don’t invest in our human resources. The drills are also meant to inculcate a culture of safety and develop muscle memory on what should be done should the Big One happens,” Bautista said.
QCDRRMO chief Karl Michael Marasigan emphasized the importance of the drill in Quezon City’s disaster contingency plan, which aims to attain zero casualties particularly during actual occurrences of mass casualty scenarios such as earthquakes.
The 3rd Metro Shake Drill was organized to prepare for and raise awareness on the threat posed by the West Valley Fault, which is expected to generate a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
Twelve barangays in Quezon City lie on the path of the fault line, thus Marasigan expects full participation especially from the barangays.
QCDRRMO has prepared several scenarios in the shake drill. The aim is to simulate more realistic scenarios to test preparedness of the emergency response teams of all the city’s barangays.
Marasigan assures that Quezon City will not stop improving on the shake drills until they find the proper solutions on loopholes in the existing earthquake emergency plan.
“We’ll keep on improving in our capacity on how to effectively deal with emergency situations, especially in the event of a destructive earthquake,” Marasigan said. We must raise awareness on the SOP’s (standard operating procedures) during worst case earthquake calamities.”
