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LEGAZPI CITY: For the second time, the provincial
government of Albay wasted more than P5 million in evacuation
efforts for 130,000 plus residents when Typhoon Frank failed to hit
Bicol Region on Saturday.
Typhoon Frank was expected to hit
Bicol province on Saturday but changed its course hitting Samar
province instead.
Salceda said “it’s better to
spend millions and have zero-casualty than gamble on the lives of
the people.”
Salceda however lashed at the
Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services
Administration (Pagasa) for its inaccurate reporting of the true
weather condition forcing the province to resort to its preemptive
response. He said this was already the third time Pagasa made a
wrong weather prediction for the province.
Last year, when Typhoon Mina,
packing center winds of 170 kilometers per hour, the Albay
provincial government spent P19.5 million for the evacuation of some
170,000 residents (32,000 families) in various evacuation centers,
in an effort to avoid repetition of what happened when Super Typhoon
Reming devastated the province on November 30, 2006.
Typhoon Reming killed close to
2,000 people in the towns of Camalig, Daraga, Sto. Domingo, and
Legazpi City, many of them were no longer recovered after they were
buried by mudflows from Mt. Mayon.
--Manny T. Ugalde
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