Philippines to build permanent evacuation centres

by Gilbert P. Felongco:

The Philippine government has announced plans to build dedicated evacuation centres in every region.

The country is especially susceptible from calamities because of its location. It records at least 20 strong weather events every year, including typhoons.

Starting next year, permanent shelters will be set up across the country to house evacuees during times of natural calamity or conflict, a lawmaker said.

“We have been used to designating state school buildings as evacuation centres in times of disasters and this is not healthy because there are instances when it takes weeks or months before calamity victims are able to go back to their homes or are provided with new shelters,” Senator Loren Legarda said.

Legarda, who was recently recognised at the Paris UN Climate Conference, COP 21, as a “Global Champion for Resilience,” said often, children’s education suffers whenever there is a need to temporarily use state schools for evacuation.

She said most of the time, resumption of classes in affected areas had to be delayed because schoolhouses were being used to shelter the displaced.

Legarda said she had introduced a provision in the proposed 2016 national budget to allocate funds for the construction of at least four permanent evacuation centres or buildings for each of the country’s 18 regions.

“We see the need to build or designate permanent evacuation centres so that we limit the use of classrooms as such. But, of course, our end goal is still to minimise the need to evacuate people by ensuring that human settlements are located in safe and disaster-resilient areas,” she added.

The evacuation centres that would be built would incorporate environmental friendliness in its construction and architecture, as well as capacity to withstand severe whether and earthquake events.

“Following our experience with Typhoon Yolanda which had a wind speed of about 235 kilometres per hour and the magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Bohol in 2013, as well as the anticipated magnitude 7.2 earthquake that could happen in Metro Manila, we crafted a provision under the proposed 2016 General Appropriations Act (to ensure that permanent evacuation centres and other new buildings and infrastructure that will be constructed and designed must be resilient to earthquake, typhoon, flood and other extreme weather events,” the senator said.

Meanwhile, Manila has welcomed the historic climate deal to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions during the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties and the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) held at the French capital two weeks ago.

“The Philippines welcomes the Paris agreement as it responds to President Benigno Aquino III’s call for all people to act and come to an agreement that allows all voices to be heard on climate change action,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr said on Sunday.

Some 200 countries that took part in summit agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees by instituting changes to limit carbon emissions.

gulfnews.com