The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has vowed to deliver hourly hazard information with 100 percent accuracy when they finish installing disaster warning equipment in the country's disaster-prone areas this year.
On a visit to disaster sites in the province over the weekend, Science Secretary Mario Montejo said the hazard warning equipment – rain gauges, weather stations and landslide sensors – would be installed at vulnerable areas this year, starting in Leyte's St. Bernard town.
The equipment, all made locally through a partnership between the DOST and the University of the Philippines Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute, were designed to provide data every hour, DOST said.
“We are accelerating the deployment of these gadgets in 10 sites all over the country that are constantly affected by disasters, especially landslides,” said Montejo in a statement.
“People can prepare themselves better and faster,” he said.
DOST spokesperson Raymond Liboro said the first two landslide warning sensors would be installed “as soon as possible” in St. Bernard town, where a deadly landslide hit on Jan. 2, almost five years since the area was virtually buried by a similar disaster.
The landslide sensors are 20-meter tubes to be installed underground at the foot of the town's landslide-prone mountains.
Montejo visited disaster-stricken areas in Leyte over the weekend and met with local officials to discuss DOST's disaster risk management plan for the hazard-prone area.
DOST has also been upgrading critical equipment at the weather bureau, with the activation of new weather stations to boost the climate reading capabilities of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
