CEBU CITY, December 10 (PIA)–Secretary Sonny Coloma of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) urged public information officers (PIOs) to access the website of the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) where the geohazard maps containing areas highly vulnerable to landslides and flooding per region to province are found.
By accessing the ‘geohazard maps,’ Coloma said the PIOs can significantly help in educating the people especially those living in danger zones what to do in case of imminent typhoons.
“In the upper right corner of the website is written ‘geohazard maps,’ which you can just click wherein you can also choose which region down to province you want to check on regarding the susceptibility of flooding and landslides,” Coloma said.
The PCOO chief, who was guest of honor during the Information Officers’ Year-end Conference and Awards 2012, showed before the more than 100 PIOs of various government agencies from Region 6 how to access the geohazard maps at the PIA website.
Coloma expressed sadness over the death toll of typhoon Pablo which was pegged at 647 as of this posting. Compostela Valley had the most number of deaths currently reported at 316 excluding those that are still missing.
“Compostela Valley is an accident waiting to happen as based on the geohazard map alone, it is a very critical area with high susceptibility of landslides,” bared Coloma.
The geohazard maps are color-coded to determine the susceptibility of an area to landslides or flooding. Red color refers to high susceptibility of which Compostela Valley was categorized, while green color refers to moderate susceptibility to landslides and yellow as low susceptibility to landslides.
Last Friday, President Aquino visited Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley that have been severely devastated by the recent typhoon, the strongest that hit the country for this year.
Coloma said if only the geohazard maps, provided by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was used, then no tragedy would have happened
“Even one life lost is too much,” cited Coloma of Aquino’s stand.
Coloma asked the PIOs to help educate the public on the usefulness of the geohazard maps to prevent casualties from happening not only during typhoons but eve during increment weather which could also trigger landslides. (PIA-7/Fayette C. Riñen)