MMDA: Create elite regional rescue team

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chair Francis Tolentino Sunday proposed the formation of a regional elite rescue group that could be dispatched to Asian countries reeling from natural calamities such as earthquakes and typhoons.

He made the pitch in the agency’s weekly radio show after he disclosed that Manila would be hosting next year a regional conference on disaster management to be attended by several Asian countries.

The Asian Network for Major Cities 21 (ANMC21), an international network focusing on, among other things, the exchange of best practices in crisis management, earlier named Manila as the host for the annual conference tentatively set in July next year.

The conference will coincide with the country’s National Disaster Consciousness Month, according to Tolentino.

He said that organizing such a team would benefit the region where most of the countries lie in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, making the area vulnerable to tremors due to tectonic movement and intense typhoons.

“I hope we could have an Asian disaster rescue group, an elite group that could be deployed anywhere…,” he said. “We have a lot of rich neighbors that could finance its operation, not to mention provide equipment and personnel.”

“The important thing here is that this group could be dispatched anywhere in Asia should a country get stricken by calamities,” he added.

Tolentino expressed hope that his proposal could be tackled during the Manila meet.

The body gave Manila the hosting chores for the 2013 conference when Tolentino and two other local officials attended the 10th Crisis Management Conference held recently in Bangkok.

While the country may not have the most modern equipment and machinery, its modest “intervention measures” are “down-to-earth, but effective,” Tolentino said.

He mentioned the agency’s programs such as the Estero Blitz where workers clear waterways of trash that hamper the flow of floodwater, as well as the community-level Flood Control Bayanihan Zone Alliances in which barangays have been tasked to implement flood prevention measures.