ZAMBOANGA City joins other areas in the country in participating in the 3rd Quarter Nationwide Simultaneous Earthquake Drill (NSED) set on Thursday, August 16.
At 2 p.m., the city hall siren will sound off to signal the commencement of the earthquake drill, which will be facilitated by the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO).
Dr. Elmeir Jade Apolinario, CDRRMO chief, said the pilot area for Thursday's NSED will be the Universidad de Zamboanga (UZ) in Tetuan village as well as other UZ campuses in this city.
Two previous earthquake drills were conducted at City Hall with the active participation of Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar and the local government workforce on June 21 and February 15.
These earthquake drills is conducted quarterly by the CDRRMO in collaboration with the Department of National Defense (DND) and other concenred government agencies.
The drills seek to test the efficiency and usefulness of the preparedness, response, and recovery plans, systems, and policies in localities, offices, and schools, to evaluate the effectiveness of contingency plans, to test the coordination and communication mechanism during response operations, and to understand the command and control mechanisms in emergency and disaster operations at the DRMMCs.
Apolinario said that evaluators will be deployed to monitor and observe the performance of all participating offices on Thursday's drills. (Bong Garcia/SunStar Philippines)