‘Big One’: Seat of gov’t in Central Luzon seen

MAGALANG, Pampanga—If a 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes Metro Manila, offices of national agencies will be moved to Pampanga, Bulacan and other nearby provinces as part of a plan to sustain the bureaucracy, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said on Friday.

“Definitely Pampanga and Bulacan can serve as alternative centers,” she told reporters.

Pampanga does not sit on any fault line and is the regional center of Central Luzon. It is a model for what Soliman called a “new normal” in local government-citizen cooperation in responding to disasters.

The secretary was here for the blessing of a permanent evacuation center built by the provincial government using a P10-million grant from the Department of Social Welfare and Development. It is the first facility of its kind in Central Luzon, Soliman told officials.

The three-story building sits on a 3.9-hectare land which the provincial government had bought for P5.9 million from the National Housing Authority. Four more permanent evacuation centers are being prepared in lands that the provincial government bought in Sasmuan, Lubao and Arayat towns.

As for an earthquake, dubbed the “Big One,” which may be triggered by movements on the 100-kilometer West Valley Fault, Soliman said the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) had been doing predisaster risk assessment, overseen by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.

“We will do many earthquake drills and identify safe evacuation sites [in Metro Manila],” she said.

On Friday, the NDRRMC met with officers of private corporations to identify sites where cooked food would be served to quake victims. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon