QC councilor files ordinance paying tribute to former Phivolcs director

A measure to name a government building in Quezon City after the late head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), Dr. Raymundo Punongbayan, is under review.

The proposed ordinance to name the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (DRMMO) which is under construction at the city hall compound after Punongbayan has been referred for further study to the city council’s committees on public affairs, mass media, information and people’s participation; and on laws, rules and internal government.

Authored by Councilor Donato Matias of the sixth district, the measure said that naming the DRMMO building after the late Phivolcs director would be a fitting tribute to his “extraordinary service and dedication to the Filipino people.”

Matias cited Punongbayan’s stint as Phivolcs director from 1983 to 2002 during which two major calamities—the July 16, 1990, Luzon earthquake and the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption— struck the country. The late director’s close monitoring of Mt. Pinatubo and his massive information drive to inform the public about its impending eruption saved thousands of lives.

Punongbayan was considered an authority in the fields of volcanology, seismology, geology and disaster-preparedness, and also served as a governor of the then Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC).

A member of the task force for the Development of [an] Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Prevention Master Plan for the Asia-Pacific Region, he was the national focal person of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ coast subcommittee on meteorology and geophysics.

He and eight Phivolcs and Air Force personnel died in a helicopter crash on April 28, 2005, in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija. At that time, he and other PNRC officials were on a mission to assess the area for the government’s disaster preparedness operations program.