UNWFP, EMI holds Capacity Needs Assessment for Disaster Preparedness and Response

UNWFP, EMI holds Capacity Needs Assessment for Disaster Preparedness and Response

By: Bennie A. Recebido

Sorsogon City, PIA (April 5) – A two- day parallel assessments in Irosin and Juban towns in Sorsogon will be conducted staring April 5 to April 6, 2011 by the United Nations World Food Programme-Philippines (UNWFP) through the Earthquake Megacities Initiative Incorporated (EMI).

Sorsogon Provincial Disaster Risk Management Office (PDRMO) public information officer Von Labalan in a press release said that the assessment aims to chart on hand capacity development activities, determine the key gaps and propose definite areas of intervention for Irosin and Juban, the two towns that have been identified as potential sites for the municipal assessments rooted in their exposure to multi-hazards and income classification.

Prior to these assessments, Labalan said that the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (PDRRMC) collectively chose to recommend the local government units of Irosin and Juban for the assessment due to the following reasons:

·         These are multi-hazard municipalities; the center of Bulusan volcanic eruption, which as yet experience ashfall ejection that seriously had an effect on the economic survival of farmers and fishermen;

·         All through rainy days, Irosin immerses to lahar flow through the gullies that overflow in the direction of its low lying barangays;

·         Juban is the catch basin of excess water and lahar from Irosin, flooding all barangays along Cadac-an river that carries the lahar towards the mouth of Sorsogon Bay that is silted, needs dredging;

·         Whereas Irosin and Juban are 3^rd and 4^th class municipalities respectively, economy oscillates and their development is unsustainable due to lots of intrusions caused by existing natural hazards.

To carry out a capacity needs assessment for disaster preparedness and response in four extremely disaster-prone provinces in Luzon, namely: Benguet, Cagayan, Laguna and Sorsogon, the UNWFP has engaged the EMI to conduct such assessments which for Sorsogon are the towns of Irosin and Juban.

EMI is a not-for-profit scientific international organization instituted in the Philippines in 2004, whose enterprise is to put into progress urban risk reduction policy, knowledge and practice through mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction in local government functions and processes, the development of tools to sustain local disaster risk management, and connecting cities through intellectual capacity sharing systems. (PIA Sorsogon)