A total of 120,888 families—or nearly 433,000 individuals—were preemptively evacuated to reduce the risk of casualties amid the impact of Severe Tropical Storm “Opong,” the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) said Friday.
OCD Deputy Administrator Assistant Secretary Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said most of the evacuees came from Bicol (Region 5), Eastern Visayas (Region 8), and Mimaropa (Region 4-B), where the storm has passed.
Alejandro explained that the eye of the storm traversed Samar before shifting to Palanas, Masbate where it made a landfall earlier on Friday. The state weather bureau said ‘Opong’ made another landfall over Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro after passing through Sibuyan and Tablas Islands in Romblon.
“So, our operations will be nonstop today and we will be closely monitoring the impact of Opong,” he said.
Alejandro noted that the OCD health cluster has sufficient medical supplies. Other assets such as aircraft and ships are on standby, along with the OCD search, rescue and retrieval cluster, he added.
“We have more or less 52,000 personnel on standby at a given notice that can be deployed or utilized to augment the capabilities of the local government units,” he said.
The Civil Defense official assured the public of sufficient food and non-food items from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the availability of more or less P3 billion worth of standby funds.
Alejandro likewise assured that the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has available resources with 833 teams ready with their equipment to assist the telecommunications industry.
