''Egay'' left ''extensive'' damage in the whole country: OCD
Super Typhoon “Egay” left ''extensive'' damage in all parts of the country, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) said Monday.
“The damage was extensive because the whole Philippines was affected, from Ilocos Norte to BARMM (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao)…Now, the number of people affected was over a million. Of that million, more than 15,900 are in evacuation centers and we have 330 evacuation centers,” OCD Administrator Undersecretary Ariel Nepomuceno told the “Laging Handa” briefing.
“Unfortunately, there were also reports of 16 deaths. Those are still subject to validation because our local officials are busy assisting our citizens. There also reports of 20 missing individuals, including the four members of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG),” he added.
Two PCG teams, both composed of four members each, were deployed on July 26 to rescue crew members on a tugboat during the onslaught of Typhoon “Egay.
The team that was boarding a rubber boat went missing after it capsized while the team on the aluminum boat survived, Nepomuceno earlier said.
According to the PCG, the tugboat was found on July 28, with all its seven passengers, in the waters off Camiguin Island, Calayan, Cagayan.
Nepomueno said the damage to agriculture had reached P1.5 billion and damage to infrastructure had amounted to more than P4 billion.
In a separate briefing held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), Science and Technology Secretary Renato Solidum said the government should focus on extreme hazard events to bring down the number of casualties.
“You cannot prevent the scale of hazards. For example, widespread flooding is different from the scale of rain…That’s why one of my advocacies is we should focus on extreme events. So these extreme events will definitely affect more people than normal,” Solidum told reporters.
“That is why I think of the word disaster imagination, you need to bring down the people that certain flood events or certain typhoons or certain earthquakes will have different impacts (on) depending on the magnitude,” he added.
For his part, Nepomuceno said safety regulations related to disaster prevention should be strictly implemented.
“Insofar as information dissemination is concerned, I think that when the government, including the national government, and local government units, as well as the media, announces that a storm is coming, the public have a high awareness about it. However, our problem is whether the citizens will follow the safety regulation. That problem is quite complex,” he said.
“We see that there should be discipline among the enforcers of regulations. For example, you are not allowed to exceed the passenger limit of a banca…So there should be discipline among the enforcement and the citizens. If you are going to board a ship or a boat and you know you need a vest ask for one,” he added.
“We will strive to train people even at the barangay level of the LGUs to be prepared (for disasters),” Nepomuceno said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS
