Davao Oriental is center of national quake drill

HIGH-RISE RESCUE A member of a rescue team in Davao City demonstrates how to save people trapped in a high-rise building during an earthquake drill in 2017. —ARJOY CENIZA

DAVAO CITY — Earthquake-prone Davao Oriental province is this year’s pilot area for the national earthquake drill set on Thursday, officials said.

In December last year alone, 21 moderate to moderately strong tremors had been recorded in Davao Oriental, records showed. It increased to 32 in the first two weeks of January.

One of Mindanao’s longest fault lines that extended up to the Caraga region and connected to the Philippine Fault actually originated in the province, a report from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said.

“Considering [that] it is difficult to know precisely where the next disaster will strike, there is a need to be prepared for future [earthquakes],” Gov. Nelson Dayanghirang said in a statement.

Dayanghirang said he signed a memorandum of agreement with Phivolcs, the Office of Civil Defense and other agencies for the conduct of the Rapid Earthquake Damage Assessment System training in the province.

“The program will train key personnel in the use of a database system that predicts severity and the damage that an earthquake will cause in terms of population, economic and others,” he added.

Karen Lou Deloso, Davao Oriental information officer, said preparation was important for the province because the threat from earthquakes was real, citing the 8.3-magnitude earthquake that hit Davao Oriental in 1924. —Allan Nawal