Search and Rescue (SAR) personnel of the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (Nocppo) are being readied for deployment in response to recent activities of Mount Kanlaon.
Maj. Edison Garcia, Nocppo spokesman, said the 1st and 2nd Provincial Mobile Force were also ordered to prepare one platoon each of its SAR personnel. Police stations surrounding the vicinity of the volcano were directed to prepare their respective search and-rescue teams, Garcia said
These SAR personnel will be deployed to help the affected Negrenses, when the alert level requires mandatory evacuation, Col Romy Palgue, officer in charge of Nocppo, said in a statement.
Palgue also ordered police stations to co-ordinate with their respective local Disaster Risk Reduction Management Councils and local government units to plan out early and to revisit their contingency plans.
Meanwhile, La Carlota City Mayor Rex Jalando-on said the city government had identified evacuation sites of residents of five barangay (villages) located at the foot of Mount Kanlaon.
The five barangay are Araal, Yubo, San Miguel, Haguimit and La Granja, he said.
Evacuees will be assigned to adoptive barangay in the poblacion (town), the mayor said.
He said pickup points in every barangay were also being identified. The city is also conducting an inventory of all public and private transportation in the five barangay, he added.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reported a surge of volcano-tectonic earthquakes at Mount Kanlaon this week, but it remains at Alert Level 1.
Alert Level 1 means the volcano is at an abnormal condition and has entered a period of unrest, the state agency.