By Dr. Maria Cristina S. Marasigan / Special to the BusinessMirror
BY being the only municipality that lies between the West and East Valley Fault, the municipality of Rodriguez (Montalban) in the far north part of Rizal, needs to be totally prepared when the “Big One” strikes Mega Manila and the provinces surrounding it.
The Municipal Disaster Risks Reduction Management Council is doing its best in preparing schools by conducting seminars on Disaster Preparedness and Risk Reduction, specializing on what to do before, during and after earthquakes. But knowing what to do is not enough; students need to know how to do it right. Simulation is what they do in Tagumpay National High School.
To make the school implement the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Preparation efficiently and effectively, the school first established a School Disaster Risks Reduction Management Council (SDRRM) which is composed of the chief, deputy chief, disaster and analysis officers; medical officers; communication, fire and earthquake drill officers; supply, relief and transportation officers; rescue, facilities and evacuation officers; and monitoring and action officers.
The council devised an evacuation plan and a tarpaulin which includes the Emergency Hotlines of local government units, nongovernmental organizations, disaster focal persons and the school management.
Students were also involved by having SDRMM councils in each classrooms. There is also a student committee called Student Watching Team who identify hazardous areas of the school and report it to the person mapping the area and to the management to create intervention on the specific matter. The school also periodically conducts unannounced fire and earthquake drills, and during these drills, students will go to their respective quadrant which was mapped on the ground. The quadrant system helps in preventing congestion in one area, and will identify the class sections included in a quadrant; this is helpful in the second phase of a drill which is the headcount wherein it will enable each adviser or subject teacher track their student in a certain quadrant. The drill also simulates the post-earthquake scenarios: the members of the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts and Red Cross Youth lead the rescue and retrieval, then the provision of first aid to injured students. The drills are assessed to identify weaknesses and areas of improvement that will make the drill more effective. All students carry with them at all times their SOS kit composed of aluminum whistle, flashlight and sewn doormat which serves as head protector.
By doing all of these, we are committed to help, within our possibilities to support the Department of Education’s (DepEd) campaign in making every school resilient in all upcoming disasters. For our part, in school we share relevant experiences and technical information related to all aspects and benchmarking our best practices including school-to-school learning, capacity development and information on how we are doing the implementation. We also participate in national, regional, division and municipal forums to gain knowledge and information and skills for survival.
In Rodriguez, our school is one of three schools within the 5-meter buffer zone of the West Valley Fault System, quite scary but our goal is to promote awareness among our students, teachers and staff on the benefits of reducing risks by having and practicing our best practices diligently and constantly.
The safety of our students should be one of our top priorities, whether we are on the fault line or not. Disaster could strike anytime and anywhere. It is best to invest wisely, by identifying budget allocations for purchasing equipment and materials that would be used to save lives in case disaster strikes.
We are also encouraging our policy-makers and local government partners to apply and enforce realistic, risk-compliant building regulations and land-use planning principles, identify safe land wherever feasible and, most important there is a certification coming from Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology that a certain area is safe for building construction.
Overall, the campaign of theDepEd seeks to raise awareness and affect change by urging every school to conduct a once-a-week unannounced earthquake drills to enable every person at school ready and prepared.