The celebration of this year’s National Disaster Resilient Month in the city will highlight the 2nd City Wide Shake Out Drill that will be staged on July 27, 2018, nine o’clock in the morning.
“This year we will still be following the same mechanics, but there will be a few things to be added ,” said Lyndon Anjacas, admin officer and training director, of Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, during the weekly AFP-PNP Press Corps Southern Mindanao forum at The Royal Mandaya Hotel on July 4, Wednesday.
Anjacas said that the number of mock patients will be increased in order to train the responders for a mass casualty incident. A joint field hospital will also be on the activity all over in Davao City to cater the number of people.
“We will what we did last year where in we set up an emergency operation center somewhere in a high ground,” Ancajas said.
Ret. BGen. Manuel Luis Ochotorena, regional director, of Office of Civil Defence, said that the unexpected incident such as earthquake is the reason why there is a need to conduct a National Simultaneous Drill quarterly in order to raise awareness and preparedness of the public. He also urged the local government to adapt the same practice and do it on their own.
Anjacas said that the earthquake drills should be taken seriously by everyone because in Davao City there are six active fault lines namely Lacson Fault, Tamugan Fault, Biao Eskwela fault, Dacudao Fault, Dacudao Colosas fault and New Carmen Fault. He said that DRRMO gives more focus on the barangays that will be affected by these fault lines.
“We are encouraging the public to participate and take the drills seriously because what we are doing in the drill are the things that they will probably do in the actual emergency. So if you just laugh it off and make fun while doing the drill the tendency is when the real emergency occurs you will panic and will not know what to do. So I encourage everyone to take it seriously,” he said.
The first City Wide Shake Out Drill was staged on July 14, 2017 and was participated by 500,000 people.
