BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – Police authorities in Negros Occidental are bracing for possible evacuations of villagers near Mt. Kanlaon.
Colonel Romy Palgue, Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (NOPPO) officer-in-charge, ordered his personnel to prepare amid the continued volcanic unrest of Kanlaon, which remains under Alert Level 1.
NOPPO spokesperson, Major Edison Garcia, said Palgue ordered the provincial police to conduct an inventory of all personnel and equipment needed for search and rescue operations, should the volcano’s current condition worsens.
Garcia said a platoon of 32 personnel from NOPPO headquarters at Camp Alfredo Montelibano in this city’s Barangay Estefania are ready to be deployed in case the situation warrant it.
The 1st and 2nd Negros Occidental Police Mobile Force Company have also prepared one platoon each, and they are currently placed in police stations which are in proximity to the volcano and are ready to be deployed for search and rescue operations.
The police stations surrounding the volcano have also been ordered to coordinate with their respective local disaster risk reduction management councils and offices in order to plan out their course of action and they are told to revisit their contingency plans.
Based on the latest information released by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the volcano’s seismic monitoring network recorded 44 volcano-tectonic earthquakes in a 24-hour period from June 24 to 25.
Moderate emission of white steam-laden plumes that rose 200 meters before drifting northwest was observed, and the sulfur dioxide emission has dropped to 237 tonnes a day from 438 tonnes last June 13.
Earlier on Monday morning, a 4.7 magnitude earthquake was recorded at the western flanks of the volcano.
The continued tremors later forced some residents in Bago City’s Barangay Ilijan to evacuate due to the danger of landslides and rockslides triggered by the earthquakes./PN
