RESILIENCE. The Ormoc City Hall. New Ormoc City Mayor Lucy Torres-Gomez on Monday (July 4, 2022) said she would focus on making the city the leading local government unit in integrating disaster resiliency in almost all of its projects. (PNA file photo)
ORMOC CITY, Leyte – New Ormoc City Mayor Lucy Torres-Gomez said she would focus on making the city the leading local government unit in integrating disaster resilience in almost all of its projects.
Speaking to employees on Monday, Gomez said aside from peace and order, her primary concern is disaster preparedness, resiliency, and management since Eastern Visayas is constantly hit by typhoons and even earthquakes.
“We also know that maintaining peace goes beyond fight against illegal drugs and criminality. Time and time again we experience that peace is very fragile. Gains in peace become irrelevant when disasters and calamity strike because it crashes, destroys, and affect everything and takes several years to rebuild,” with this, she emphasized the need for local officials to ensure safety and survival in the aftermath of disaster and think beyond physically surviving as well.
“As the former chair of the committee on disaster resilience of the 18th Congress, I want to implement my learnings and insight in Ormoc City, the first fully integrated disaster-resilient city,” she said.
Oftentimes, when talking about solving the problem of flooding, typhoon, and earthquake, most solutions are by constructing a disaster-resistant evacuation center, which is also essential, according to the mayor.
However, when Typhoons Odette and Agaton ravaged Leyte, Gomez said she realized local authorities have to think beyond physically surviving the disasters.
“This means ensuring the quick resumption of three bedrock infrastructures: namely road, electricity and telecommunication. The reason why I refer to this as bedrock infrastructure is because without these three, it is very difficult to bring back normalcy after a disaster,” she added.
Gomez added that Ormoc City is lucky that her husband, Richard, now the district representative of Leyte’s Fourth District, laid the foundation and implemented several disaster preventive infrastructures. (PNA)
