THE command center of Dagupan’s Public Alert Response and Monitoring Center (PARMC) has been moved back to the third floor from its current location on the first floor inside the City Engineering Office compound building as part of heightened preparations for a potential tsunami based on recent intensified movements in the Manila Trench, Mayor Belen Fernandez announced

She said the transfer is intended to secure overall operations and the sophisticated instruments at the PARMC that includes the intensity meter provided by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

PARMC was moved to the first floor from the third floor of a building by the past Lim administration for no clear purpose, spending some half a million pesos for the transfer.

When Fernandez was again elected as mayor in 2022 she immediately returned the PARMC back to its original site after new majority in the Sangguniang Panlungsod passed Supplemental Budget No. 2 in the amount of P557 million, which included outlays for the transfer, a rescue truck and several small rescue boats that can navigate through flooded neighborhoods and small creeks, and tools and equipment for the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.

The Office of Civil Defense recently ordered local governments of coastal areas in northern Luzon to step up their evacuation and rescue plans for the potential tsunami that could emanate from the Manila Trench.

Fernandez said another measure being implemented is increasing the number of privately-hosted evacuation center program, wherein owners of high-rise houses and buildings will be required to open their properties for the evacuation of their neighbors in the event of a tsunami.

The completion of an evacuation center in Pugaro Island is also being fast-tracked following the passage of a supplemental budget for this purpose. (Leonardo Micua)

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