TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA) – The head of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (PDRRMO) announced the activation of a Unified Command Center (UCC) that could help address delays in rescue efforts due to lack of inter-agency coordination.
PDRRMO officer Dr. Anthony Damalerio said an Executive Order signed by Gov. Erico Aristotle Aumentado in 2023 has established the UCC, a centralized multi-agency facility that allows better coordination efforts in response to crisis situations to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency in disaster prevention and response.
It may be recalled that a few weeks ago in Antequera town, a group of teenagers went swimming in a cave pool and three of them decided to explore an underwater cave, where they got trapped in a dark cave cavity for three to eight hours.
In the absence of an operational protocol for the local disaster workers, they sent information to the PDRRMO but succeeding information from the source could not be obtained anymore as the local Incident Command System set up in the vicinity of the rescue area, where mobile signal was not available.
Calls for rescue allegedly came to the PDRRMO, Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), and other private rescue groups, but these were not clearly coordinated and rescuers lost the critical advantage of time.
Agencies went to the site on their own, instead of using the UCC as the base so that rescue groups could bring the best equipment and the most experienced and trained rescue personnel.
The UCC, housed at the PDRRM Operations Center in Dao District, would be manned by the PCG, BFP, Philippine National Police, and the Philippine Army’s 47 Infantry Battalion for a faster response.
The UCC shall leverage state-of-the art technologies to enhance its capabilities in crisis management, communication, information sharing, and decision-making, according to Aumentado.
Composing the UCC is a management and operations group made up of the PDRRMO, Bohol Provincial Police Office, PCG, Armed Forces of the Philippines, BFP, Department of Health, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
From these agencies, an incident commander would be picked based on experience, expertise, authority, and crisis management. (RAHC/PIA Bohol)
