The Office of Civil Defense would rather have the evacuees in Negros Occidental from outside Kanlaon Volcano’s 6-kilometer danger zone moved to a tent city rather than be allowed to go home.
It would be better for them to move to a tent city in Himamaylan City to ensure their safety should Kanlaon Volcano erupt again, OCD 6 (Western Visayas) Director Raul Fernandez, Task Force Kanlaon chairman, said at a press conference on Wednesday, Dec. 8.
Some evacuees from areas outside the 6-kilometer danger zone in La Castellana and Bago City, Negros Occidental, went home on Wednesday, after close to a month of living in evacuation centers.
Mayor Rhummyla Nicor Mangilimutan said the evacuees returned to their homes outside the 6-kilometer expanded danger zone in Barangay Sag-ang, La Castellana, but she did not have the exact number yet.
The provincial government is sending buses to La Castellana to assist in the decamping activities, Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz said.
There were 461 evacuees in Bago City who also went home on Wednesday, while 48 remained at the Regional Evacuation Center, Dr. Merijene Ortizo, Bago City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Officer, said.
The decision to allow evacuees outside the danger zone to go home was reached after Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson met with officials of La Carlota City, Bago City and La Castellana on Tuesday.
Fernandez said the decision to send home evacuees from outside the 6-kilometer expanded danger zone is within the authority and power of the local government officials.
What we can do is give advice, it will be the local officials who will be accountable for their people, he said.
What is mandatory is there should be no human activity in the expanded 6-kiometer danger zone, he said.
The threat of a Kanlaon Volcano eruption remains based on the frequency of its earthquakes, ash and sulfur emissions, and inflated edifice, Fernandez said.
Phivolcs reported ash emission from the Kanlaon Volcano summit crater at 10:25 a.m. Wednesday.
“This event generated grayish plumes that rose 500 meters above the crater before drifting south west”, it said.
“Let us not be complacent… all indicators still point to an imminent eruption”, Fernandez said.
“We want to have manageable situation,” he said.
A chaotic situation will put a lot of lives in danger, he said.
If the evacuees from La Castellana are moved to the Himamaylan tent city their care will be a shared burden with the help of other local government units and not just of the La Castellana municipal government, Fernandez said.
Department of Social Welfare and Development data on Tuesday showed that there were 13,082 evacuees in evacuation centers on Negros Island.*