It is a major concern that La Castellana in Negros Occidental, which is expected to be the hardest hit by a major Kanlaon Volcano eruption, still has no final and approved contingency plan, Office of Civil Defense-Western Visayas Regional Director Raul Fernandez said on Wednesday, Feb. 19.
Fernandez, who is also Task Force Kanlaon head, was referring to La Castellana’s still having no final plan on where thousands of its resident should be evacuated if Kanlaon erupts and is placed under Alert Level 4.
It is worrisome if not acted on soon, Fernandez said.
La Castellana Mayor Rhummyla Nicor Mangilimutan is proposing that the affected residents be evacuated to two barangays in her town, he said.
The mayor has not come up with specific evacuation sites yet that would need the approval of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology first, Fernandez said.
The sites to be identified by the mayor have no facilities for the evacuees yet, he also said.
Fernandez said they want to avoid “double handling” wherein evacuees would have to be transferred twice.
They are hoping to convince the mayor to finalize the La Castellana contingency plan soon, he said.
They will keep on persuading the mayor to agree to evacuation sites outside of La Castellana, Fernandez said.
The OCD is preparing evacuation sites in the cities of Himamaylan and Kabankalan to accommodate evacuees from La Castellana if needed, he said.
He said there is a shortage of evacuation centers to evacuate 100,000 residents under a worst-case scenario that is why they are looking for evacuation sites in other LGUs , too.
“Whether they (La Castellana) like it or not there will be a spillover” of displaced residents, Fernandez said.
He said La Castellana is the lone Kanlaon affected area that has yet to sign a memorandum of understanding with other local government units to accept its evacuees under a worst-case scenario, he added.
Mangilimutan told DIGICAST NEGROS that under La Castellana’s revised contingency plan they want to include barangays Manghanoy, Nato, Talaptap and Lalagsan as evacuation areas in her town.*