THOUSANDS of people in Cagayan de Oro City, most of them students, have participated in the National Simultaneous Earthquake Drill (NSED) held Thursday, June 21.

Allan Porcadilla, head of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO), said close to a dozen schools and a mall have conducted the drill.

According to the CDRRMO assessment, the students’ awareness level has been raised after participating in the earthquake drills in the past.

“Our children already know what to do whenever there’s a shaking. They have committed the ‘duck, cover, hold’ tip to heart,” he said.

He said this preparedness especially among students was due to the repeated conduct of the earthquake drill, which is held every quarter.

Recently, the City Government purchased hydraulic and pneumatic rescue equipment that can be used in the event Cagayan de Oro experiences a damaging earthquake, worth P6 million, among them ram jack, rescue saw, and jack hammer.

Porcadilla said the equipment can cut through steel, wood and concrete to retrieve victims who might be buried by debris in a collapsed structure.

He said the rescue gears can also be used in landslides or even vehicular incidents.

Aside from the equipment, the City Government also spent P1.6 million for the training of CDRRMO personnel in search and rescue.

Porcadilla said they are also sharing their skills and knowledge to neighboring areas in Northern Mindanao.

“We have conducted search and rescue trainings in Misamis Oriental, Lanao del Norte, Misamis Occidental, and Bukidnon to also capacitate our counterparts in those areas,” he added.

The Office of Civil Defense, in its website, said the NSED is conducted quarterly “not only as a display of response capacities among local government units but also as a way to test existing plans as well as strengthen interoperability among assisting regions.”