Mayon Volcano (Yves Eli Yu- Rep. Joey Salceda's Facebook)



People living in the seven to eight-kilometer (km) danger zone of Mayon Volcano in Albay should be ready to evacuate “at a moment’s notice”, if the reported "heightened activity" of the volcano is anything to go by. Thus, said Albay 2nd district Rep. Joey Salceda, who also reckoned that “mobility assets should be ready" as an evacuation of this scale would normally  "take days to complete". “At a moment’s notice, at least 8,000 additional families or 30,000 individuals will need to be evacuated. Again, that’s on top of the ones we already evacuated. You could imagine the number of mobility assets we will need to move them," said the veteran congressman. “Even with the mobility assets already deployed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines to support evacuation, we estimate it will take three and a half days, given time-and-motion calculations,” he noted. Salceda is a former three-term governor of Albay and has experience with responding to such calamity. “We need all the vehicles we can prepare. My office is prepared to support the needs of local government units (LGUs), and I have commitments from private sector members, including those in the construction and transport sectors, to provide transportation aid. “We need everything we can get, so right now, my appeal to government agencies is to help us prepare the needed mobility assets. Trucks, vans, buses – everything we can use to safely convey evacuees,” Salceda said. But with ample assets, the solon said it's possible to move that number of evacuees in just one day. "During my time as governor, in 2010, we were able to move evacuees within an afternoon. By 6 pm, evacuation was complete. We had to requisition the vehicles that we can...We have to do it very quickly because ashfall as a situation can develop rapidly, and you have hours, not days, to move people," he recalled. Meanwhile, Salceda reiterated his appreciation of the efforts by the national government to prepare food aid for an increase in evacuees. “I reiterate my thanks to the President and his team for their quick response to our needs for food assistance and economic support. At least we will not have to worry about how to feed evacuees when we have to evacuate more,” he said. “But, once it becomes necessary, we won’t have days to move evacuees. We will have mere hours," he further said.