Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Mercury spill in Makati recalls gear for Cebu exercise
DESPITE the lack of equipment, a simulation exercise on an explosion at a mall was completed yesterday.
This was similar to an exercise they did at the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 last week, only without the special suits.
The protective suits are made up of masks and self-contained breathing apparatus that cover the entire body.
Special suits for such incidents would have been used to simulate a chemical attack at the Ayala Center Cebu.
The exercise was part of the preparations for the Asean summit next month.
However, a mercury spill in Manila led to the recall of the special suits that would have been used here in Cebu.
From this incident, PRO 7 Director Silverio Alarcio Jr., said they saw what could happen if another emergency occurs outside of Cebu during the summit on Dec. 11 to 14.
The Cebu City Government, PRO 7, Regional Disaster Coordinating Council, Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) and the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation (Eruf) were all part of the exercise.
The poor coordination among policemen and emergency response teams in yesterday’s simulation exercise showed that much improvement is needed, Cebu City Councilor Augustus Pe Jr. said.
Pe noted the participants’ slow response.
The BFP Special Response Unit (SRU) specifically did not respond on time, he said.
“The teams were not very well coordinated. The response time was quite slow,” Pe told reporters hours after exercise.
To avoid a similar scenario in the event of an emergency during the summit, the agencies agreed to put the SRU under the command of Alarcio, also the head of the Task Force Cebu.
The agencies also agreed to hold another dry run before the summit to check if the participating policemen and rescue teams learned from yesterday’s mistakes.
Since the exercise was the first time for all the agencies, Alarcio said it was a learning experience for them.
He admitted that they need to integrate the communication of all agencies concerned.
Because the incident called for police, firefighters, rescuers and paramedics, response time was delayed.
Alarcio said they were planning to integrate all the agencies using the Mobile Alarm Response System (Mars), first introduced as a system that will enable City Hall to receive an alarm just three seconds after it is raised.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña introduced the system as a deterrent to the rise in robberies in the city.
At present, there are different hotlines for police, fire and medical emergencies.
Also, because of the mercury spill, the agencies were not able to use the proper equipment in rescuing the pretend victims of the chemical explosion.
The special suits will be sent back to Cebu, though.
BFP 7 Director Victoriano Remedio said that each suit costs P400,000 and that this was not a priority purchase because there are towns that do not have basic facilities such as a fire truck.
He said they propose the purchase of such suits in the annual budget, but this often gets rejected because of the lack of basic facilities of other fire stations. (MEA/LCR)
