Zubiri challenges Congress to chip in P1.4 billion for disaster preparedness fund

Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, a certified rescue diver and Philippine National Red Cross governor challenged senators and congressmen to allot P10 Million and P5 Million each, respectively from their Priority Development Assistance Fund. Zubiri stressed “damages resulting to disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, floodings, landslides and fires cost us billions of pesos in damages and loss of lives why it may take only about a billion peso to minimize the loss of lives and cost of these damages.”

“Disaster response should be raised one notch higher from reactive to anticipatory or preparedness, as it has long been established that we are right smack in the ring of fire of earthquakes and volcanoes and the typhoon belt. Aggravating our disaster-prone situation is global warming that hastens the spread of diseases and ecological disasters like fish kills from algal blooms, infestations of locusts, rats and other pests. Likewise accidents like oil spillages as we are in the middle of busy shipping lanes in the Pacific Ocean and China Sea .”

He urged everyone in all national and local government agencies with disaster-related functions to tackle “visioning or anticipating the scenarios that recur time and again. The buzz word would be “Imagineering” as in imagine the disaster and engineer the right response.”

“It’s relearning our old habit or responding with an emergency that has already passed. We should be anticipatory and prepared for what might come. I appreciate that the NDCC is now directing efforts at ‘Zero-Casualty state of preparedness.”

“Recruitment for volunteers should be on high gear. Volunteer brigades must be ready to respond to emergencies where people converge like residential areas, offices, factories, schools and malls. Equally important are places where people traverse like roads, bridges, the LRT and MRT where people once caught in an emergency situation should automatically take their place in quick response teams for which they trained.”

“Every able-bodied Filipino should have a regular dose of drills and lessons in rescue and rehabilitation. Even we in the Senate together with Executive officials had a messy disorganized exit when the earthquake with epicenter in Pangasinan struck Tuesday lunchtime. As you know the GSIS building suffered cracks during previous earthquakes so most of the people were nervous and forgot their duties in the emergency brigades.”

Zubiri noted that we are “inching away from our former technically-disabled status when it comes to predicting or monitoring disasters like typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and fire.” For the past 12 years, we have been visited by more than 130 storms and typhoons, lost more than 2000 hectares of forest to fires, from 10-38 major floodings and landslides in a year and from 80-200 structural fires a year among other disasters.

Zubiri noted that government is finally ready to procure and upgrade equipment. For example, the Department of National Defense Disaster response and preparedness capital outlay budget is P176.8 Million or 34 % of the DND’s total capital outlay budget of P517.52 Million. The Department of Science and Technology capital outlay budget for weather and flood forecasting, geophysical and astronomical services total P73.85 Million or 83% of the DOST’s total capital outlay budget of P88.85 Million. Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology capital outlay budget for monitoring and measurement at P101.75 Million is 51 % of the total budget of the Philvolcs at P197.67 Million.

Zubiri recalled that government took time to augment funds for geo-hazard mapping citing in August the P80 Million for 1,500 tragedy-prone areas nationwide most of which are in Eastern Visayas , Region 8, Bicol and CARAGA regions.

As to typhoons Lando and Mina the National Disaster Coordinating Council reported damages of 6,075 hectares of agricultural crops as follows: 2,671 hectares of rice, 1973 has. of corn, 1,431 has. of high value crops with a combined worth of P109.65 Million. Affected families totaled 100,588 affected families consisting of 443,109 persons in 899 barangays of 19 provinces in Regions 1, 2, 3, 4-A, 5, 8 and the Cordillera Region. Disaster groups also evacuated 44,489 families or 201,329 persons in 688 evacuation centers.