CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Central Luzon’s Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (RDRRMC) is abandoning its traditional base at the police’s regional headquarters at Camp Olivas here which now unfailingly turns into a sea of stagnant and deep floods during rainy seasons.
The RDMMC is moving instead to the military base at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija.
“We are now facing a new kind of war that is climate change,” said a statement issued yesterday by the Philippine Army’s 7th infantry division (ID) headed by Brig. Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang.
The 7th ID said the Army’s 54th Engineering Battalion, led by Maj. Gen. Romulo Cabantac, broke grounds over the weekend for the construction of a P46.2-million new RDRRMC “three-in-one facility” at the Army Aviation Battalion Compound in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija.
Declaring war on the effects of climate change, the 7th ID said “one way to prevent disaster from happening is through mitigation and preparation.”
“The proposed RDRRMC three-in-one facility is a one unit of two story building with a total project cost of P 46.283 million being implemented by the 522nd Engineering Combat, Battalion of the 54th Engineering Brigade,” the 7th ID statement said.
The 7th ID said that more such facilities are to be constructed on flood-free grounds in other parts of the country, to serve as focal point for RDRRMC’s in other regions.
“The establishment of RDRRMC facility in Fort Magsaysay area will definitely improve our disaster preparedness and response in times of disasters. This facility will be the area for the storage of relief goods; this will also be the extension office of the Office of the Civil Defense in Central Luzon and this will be the command center in times of disaster,” the statement said.
It also noted that the 7th ID area “is not just an ordinary camp and tourist destination in Central Luzon but a strategic area for the establishment of these facilities since it has a vast area, is flood proof, and provides easy access either by air or by land and is well secured,” said Catapang.
“Aside from its strategic location, 7th ID has its own airport wherein cargo aircraft or even commercial airplane can land and take-off from the runway to airlift personnel to conduct disaster relief, rescue and retrieval operations or transport of goods in any place within the area of responsibility of 7th ID,” Catapang added.
