HAZARD MAPPING | Lagmay suggests local government units draw hazard maps

April 13, 2022 , 09:09 PM

By Clarist Zablan, News5 Digital

(April 13, 2022) – Local government units (LGUs) must draw hazard maps to identify earthquake, typhoon and other natural calamity danger zones to minimize loss of human lives and property in a disaster, a geology professor said on Wednesday.

Mahar Lagmay, executive director of the University of the Philippines Resilience Institute, said there were stories from evacuation centers that people apparently did not know where to evacuate during the onslaught of tropical storm Agaton this week.

“Ang payo ko, ang LGU dapat maghanap ng mga ibang lugar na malapit na mas safe, kasi gaya nga ng sabi ko, the business of hazard mapping is not to find the hazard per se but to find the places that are safest in the community,” Lagmay said on CignalTV’s One News channel’s program “Sa Totoo Lang.”

“Kaya po tayo merong mga mapa, everybody should know their neighborhood. Pero ang tanong ngayon saan ba sila pupunta sakaling alam nila na mapanganib?”

Landslide hazard maps identify parts of mountains that are prone to collapsing under heavy rain, which helps in protecting the public from danger, Lagmay explained.

These maps should also identify not just evacuation centers, but places where infrastructure can be safely built as well such as malls, hospitals, and other critical facilities to prevent danger as early as possible, he said.

Tropical storm Agaton unleashed strong rains as it slowly passed over Eastern Visayas for over two days, causing heavy floods and landslides that buried four villages in the area. At least 63 died resulting from the cyclone, mostly victims of mudslides or drowing in Baybay City, Leyte.

Leyte Congressman Carl Cari said in an interview with DZRH News that the mountainous Barangay Kantagnos, which saw a large landslide that engulfed nearly the entire province, has not been a landslide-prone area in the past.

In an earlier interview with One News Now, Lagmay said that Leyte had received 200 milliliters of rain per day, exceeding the 100-milliliter general limit that could trigger a landslide in the area.

But Leyte is not the only province in the Philippines that is prone to landslides, he said, noting that many places across the country have mountain slopes that have weakened over time due to gravity that can be easily shaken up by rainfall or earthquakes.

“It takes a trigger to get them to finally collapse and form what we call a landslide. And those triggers may include heavy rainfall like what happened in the past few days in Leyte, or it could be an earthquake,” Lagmay said.

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