SOLDIERS and police help evacuees disembark from an Army truck to the evacuation site. WILLIE LUMIBAO/CONTRIBUTOR
SAN MANUEL, Pangasinan—In the event of a dam break following a strong earthquake, residents of a village near San Roque Dam here will have about four hours to move to higher ground to avoid being submerged in 3-foot-deep floodwaters.
But Tom Valdez, vice president for corporate social responsibility of the San Roque Power Corp., assured participants of the launching of the nationwide simultaneous earthquake drill here on Monday that a dam break will never happen.
“We are conducting this drill to basically instill preparedness in our community,” Valdez said.
He said there are five factors needed to be present before a dam break happens. These are a strong earthquake, the dam is full, there is a failure in the dam’s design, there is no operator and a typhoon continues to dump rain.
“A dam break will never happen. But of course, we won’t know what will happen so we always have to be prepared. In fact, in the emergency action plan that we prepared, we are supposed to really do this drill for the whole province,” Valdez said.
Drill
The drill was held in San Vicente, a barangay (village) with more than 4,000 residents and which lies 7 kilometers from the spillways of San Roque Dam.
Asked why the earthquake drill was conducted here, Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), said it was just “to give importance to San Roque Dam.”
Del Rosario said his office had conducted similar drills in different places in the country and it is now Pangasinan’s turn. “Please don’t think we chose this place because an earthquake might happen here,” he said.
NDRRMC officials said the drill was aimed at gauging the efficiency of warning dissemination and response of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
“We want to know how ready and effective San Roque Dam is in warning the people in case of a dam break, how ready the vulnerable communities are and how prepared government agencies are,” said Defense Undersecretary Eduardo Batac.
Dr. Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said practically all provinces in the country had experienced strong quakes.
He said in Pangasinan, a strong quake toppled belfries of churches in 1796.
“Based on historical data, we cannot remove the possibility that a strong quake can still take place in Pangasinan,” Solidum said.
He said during an earthquake, residents should not worry about a dam break but instead be concerned with their own houses and buildings in their towns.
“The dam has an earth core. It is clay and it does not break during an earthquake,” Solidum said.
Pantabangan
He said the Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija was slightly damaged during the 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit Luzon in July 1990.
“The dam’s crest went down a little. But that was minor,” Solidum said.
During the drill on Monday, this scenario was played out: The earthquake struck when residents of San Vicente were holding a community assembly. In the nearby Barangay San Roque, dam personnel and technical staff inspected the facilities and found that the dam was about to break. They sounded the siren to warn residents of the impending danger.
Around town, fire broke out and water rose. There was a stampede, resulting in mass injuries.
In minutes, government disaster workers arrived in trucks, ambulances, fire trucks and helicopters, evacuating residents to higher ground. The wounded were treated while rescue teams sought out missing residents. Gabriel Cardinoza and Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon