Iloilo City (CNN Philippines) — The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) Region VI said that Iloilo City is all prepared and ready for the hosting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings on disaster response and management.
Iloilo City will host the Senior Disaster Management Officials Forum (SDMOF) on September 22 to 23.
OCD-6 Aletha Nogra said they will hold various activities to ensure emergency preparedness for the APEC. They will also tap other the member-agencies of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC).
“Aside from the usual preparation, we will activate our emergency operation center, deploy incident management team and provide emergency quick response team,” Nogra said.
She also added that the Department of Health (DOH) will be helping them for the provision of health emergency medical teams, ambulances and readiness of referral hospitals.Evacuation and search and rescue will be done by the Philippine Army.
“The same proactive activities will be applied to achieve zero incident on APEC,” said Nogra.
Aside from the disaster meeting, the city will also host the Strengthening the Capital Markets, Infrastructure Development and Financing meeting on July 23 to 24, ministerial meeting on Small and Medium Enterprises on September 21 to 25, and ministerial meeting on Food Security and Blue Economy on September 28 to October 6.
In addition, next month will be the celebration of this year’s National Disaster Consciousness Month which will focus on institutionalizing “disaster risk reduction” among children and the youth.
The activities include earthquake evacuation drills in schools, essay writing contest, poster making contest and poster-slogan making contest.
Iloilo will be the pilot area in the region to host the nationwide simultaneous earthquake drill on July 22.
This is also in preparation for the APEC Summit.
On July 3, a National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council full meeting will be held with Renato Solidum Jr., director of Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).
The Phivolcs team will give updates on earthquake assessment and earthquake reduction particularly in Western Visayas.
