OCD equips Sarangani on Incident Command System

By BEVERLY C. PAOYON

ALABEL, Sarangani (December 7, 2013) - The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) recently completed the structure for provinces in SOCSKSARGEN region on the set up of on-scene disaster response and management in consonance with President Aquino's call to establish national and local crisis management organizations throughout the country.

Here in Region 12, Sarangani was the last to have the three-day Incident Command System (ICS) basic course which concluded Thursday (December 5) and intends to cascade the implementation to its component municipalities early next year.

In the whole Philippines, OCD accounted only some two to three percent of the provinces to have been trained and around 30 percent in Mindanao.

The reason OCD cited on the delay of training to other provinces was the absence of a Provincial Disaster Risk and Response Management Office there.

ICS is a standard, on-scene, all-hazard incident management concept that can be used by all disaster risk reduction and management councils or emergency management and response agencies which can also be used for routine incidents as well as major disasters such as floods, typhoons, disease outbreaks, hostage-taking, and even planned events such as fiestas and concerts.

Amity Public Safety Academy deputy administrator Radny Pabon said the goal of establishing the ICS is to harmonize the cooperability among agencies. He pointed out if ICS was fully implemented in the Philippines, coordination would be easier for government's response team "because regardless of how many people are working on the ground, everybody knows how to work with the system."

Pabon, however, lamented the Philippines has not yet organized its own ICS-trained national response team, a call which OCD should spearhead. This, he cited, is why the country is not in the list of the international search and rescue advisory group yet.

ICS started in the Philippines in 2010 upon the mandate of the national government. Two batches of instructors were trained by the United States Forest Service that time.

Region 12 OCD regional director officer-in-charge Jerome Barranco disclosed OCD is coming up with a regional system of incident management from regional level down to provincial level and will be doing orientation in the communities in 2014. (Beverly C. Paoyon/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)