Ormoc City to become a model for resilience, disaster preparedness in PH

MINERVA BC NEWMAN

CEBU CITY – Ormoc City is poised to become the country’s model of resilience disaster preparedness and a regenerative community by adopting it through a four-party partnership agreement signed on March 15 among the Energy Development Corporation (EDC), the National Resilience Council (NRC) and the Carlos P. Romulo Foundation’s Adopt-a-City program and Ormoc City Government.

In a virtual Memorandum of Agreement signing ceremony via Zoom, the four parties vowed to work together and leverage each other’s capabilities and strengths to help Ormoc City become the country’s model city for resilience and disaster preparedness.

According to NRC president Antonia Yulo Loyzaga that the work in the partnership has a lot to do with valuing ecosystems services for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction.

“We are well in line with the statement of EDC Chairman Piki Lopez where he outlined a decarbonized and resilient future for the country, using the word regenerative, which is particularly important as far as ecosystem-based services are concerned,” Loyzaga said.

Loyzaga added that they would like to take advantage of the vast experience and knowledge of EDC, the human knowledge and technical capacity of the Ormoc City government, and NRC’s work in building this partnership.

EDC President and COO Richard Tantoco committed to keep helping Ormoc City become resilient for the good of the Ormocanons and their neighboring communities.  “Climate change is going to worsen, and we really need to be more and more prepared, which is why we are proud of this partnership with NRC and Ormoc City.” 

Tantaco expresed his excitement for the upcoming activities involving the Ormocanons, which include the formation of a multi-sectoral forest protection task force; the creation of 10 pilot barangay emergency response teams and the roll out of a city-wide disaster risk preparedness and response information campaign.

“We will expand EDC’s role in the partnership even more as the power company that provides 100% renewable energy (RE) to the province of Leyte. We’d like our geothermal facilities in Leyte to be THE most robust power facility in the country so 2-3 days after a major disaster, the Ormocanons will look up and see that there’s light and know that they can begin rebuilding their lives,” Tantoco added.

Ormoc City mayor Richard Gomez, in his response said that Ormoc is vulnerable to natural disasters, that’s why planning and foresight are very important, and partnerships like these are vital to them.

“Through this Adopt-a-City program, I know that we will achieve stronger resilience, reduce deaths, and increase development in our city. I want Ormoc to be a model city even if we are just medium sized so that other cities will look up to the things that we do in Ormoc and in Leyte. Thank you, NRC, EDC, Carlos P. Romulo Foundation. I know we will achieve excellence with this program and I’m very excited as a Mayor. Our people are very excited, and we can’t wait to begin this program,” Gomez said.

Mayor Gomez expressed his gratitude once again to EDC for the assistance that it has provided to Ormoc City during the pandemic. He said that it is not a very good time to be a mayor during a pandemic but to fight this (pandemic), you need to have a strong political will to protect your own people.

“Thank you so much, Ricky Tantoco, for putting up a testing lab in Ormoc. It is functioning well and helping us with the problem of COVID-19 in our city,” Gomez added.

According to Loyzaga that in the NRC, they use the phrase “Let’s bounce forward together.” Ormoc City and this partnership with EDC is a clear example of how “we may all bounce forward together and become a resilient city.”

Tantoco on the other hand said that they crafted its mission to forge collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future.  There are many opportunities to work in partnership with Ormoc City and NRC to be truly regenerative so that people will be truly resilient going forward.

EDC’s Leyte geothermal facility has been supplying power to the province of Leyte and to the rest of the Visayas region for almost 40 years. 

The company’s almost 1,200-megawatt total installed geothermal capacity accounts for 62- percent of the country’s generated renewable energy and is responsible for putting EDC and the Philippines on the map as the world’s 3rd largest geothermal producer. (Photos: EDC/Google files)