The serious concerns arising from the recent earthquakes and continuing aftershocks in Mindanao warrant the full integration of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology into the proposed Department of Disaster Resilience, Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda said.
Salceda, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is principal author of the DDR bill, said the events that followed the Mindanao tremors showed a lack of preparedness among all concerned agencies and local government units.
Numerous dysfunctional responses were also noted such as call center agents rushing down to the ground floor of buildings from their 6th floor work stations.
“Diffused somehow, dis-coordinated assistance responses by state actors clearly require continuous information, education and communications of risk assessments and scenario projections which can best be built into the DDR framework. Tasked as the principal agency to plan, organize, direct and oversee programs to reduce risks, warn and respond, and provide relief, recovery, and rehabilitation
initiatives, including continuous assessment of building integrity and their spatial relations to earthquakes and related hazards, the DDR can better perform organized responses to these concerns,” he said.
“Among others, we need Phivolcs for risk assessment, vulnerability reduction, and integrated response,” the lawmaker added.
The House passed the DDR proposal in the 17th Congress but it failed to hurdle the Senate.
Salceda had refiled the measure, which has been endorsed by President Rodrigo Duterte in his previous State of the Nation Addresses, in the 18th Congress as House Bill No. 30.
As conceived, the DDR shall “guarantee unity of command, and science-based approach to, and full-time focus on natural hazards and, even human-induced disasters.”
Salceda said the DDR will create a Disaster Risk Analysis and Assessment Bureau mandated to do risk analysis and assessment of communities towards the establishment of a People-Centered Early Warning System with the following key functions: 1) Generation of risk knowledge, which includes data collection and risk assessment; 2) Hazards monitoring and warning generation; 3) Warning dissemination and communication; and 4) Building of community capability through preparedness and awareness.
“This will provide the speed, scope and scale of information required to expedite accurate, understandable and timely warnings provided by the DDR which will have a scientist Undersecretary to closely supervise the bureau,” he said.