It’s the season of floods again. Monday night’s downpour in the uplands of Bukidnon caused waist-high floodwaters in some parts of Davao City as reported by the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.
As a result, more than 200 families fled their homes, and one person was declared missing. The flooding also stranded people on their way home. Areas near the Davao River, particularly in Bankerohan, were placed under Code Red. Some 233 families evacuated to safer grounds on Monday night in seven barangays along the Davao River.
It’s becoming a usual occurrence during the rainy months of June to August. And yet, we still struggle with the same problems.
A professor from the University of the Philippines Mindanao thinks it is time to codify the experiences of barangays and villages and to share their best practices with the end view of coming up with apt responses.
Prof. Karen Joyce Cayamanda, an associate professor of the University of the Philippines Mindanao, made this recommendation in her paper on risk communication management presented at the 3rd International Conference on Multidisciplinary Industry and Academic Research (ICMIAR) held online on July 29-30, 2022. In a statement sent out to media by UP Mindanao, Cayamanda said sharing community-based experiences can show how community members react and adapt to disasters and stimulate risk perception and communication among residents, from which community mechanisms can emerge that strengthen the collective responses and increase a community’s resilience against future threats.
Prof. Cayamanda’s paper earned her a “Best Presenter” award at the conference plenary session and acquires renewed relevance in the wake of recent community-level disruptions in her study area and continuing local government efforts to improve their DRRM system.
The paper coincides with the mandate of Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte for barangays to consolidate similar concerns, including security and disaster response. This is in line with the drafting of the city government’s executive-legislative agenda on disaster response.
Putting Cayamanda’s work into concrete action should help get the ball rolling. UP Mindanao could very well put its hand up in helping the city government craft the executive-legislative document based on the study made by the good professor. Likewise, the city government could also benefit from the paper to see how it can put the study to good use as a foundation of its disaster response code.
