Camiguin town adopts modern disaster management system

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The town of Mambajao in Camiguin province has adopted a modern Incident Command System (ICS) with the help of regional government agencies.

In a statement on Monday, Mambajao Mayor Yñigo Jesus Romualdo said the importance of leveraging modern technology is for organized, efficient, and fast disaster management.

"I want to maximize the use of technology where every information is centralized into one system to make an organized and fast response to an incident," he said.

Romualdo said it is essential that local government personnel become well-versed in disaster response work.

The training is an ongoing project of the Department of Science and Technology, Office of Civil Defense-Northern Mindanao (OCD-10), and the Mambajao local government, focusing on capacity-building needed for an emergency operations center (EOC).

Raquel Ranara, one of the trainers, emphasized the importance of the training for disaster preparedness and resilience, allowing better anticipation and planning to reduce losses.

"We need to train and capacitate stakeholders to understand what we will do during disasters and incidents," she said.

Marlyn Trozo, the OCD focal person, said ICS and EOC effectively complement each other by using the force-provider and force-employer relationship.

"The Incident Command System, as the force employer, manages on-scene response, while the Emergency Operations Center is the force provider that acts as a supporter to the Incident Management Team," she said. (PNA)