President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. has given Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Juanito Victor ‘Jonvic’ Remulla the blanket authority to announce the suspension of classes due to impending weather disturbances.

With the President’s order, Remulla vowed to instill a “proactive approach’’ in announcing government work and class suspensions due to typhoons.

“When I was governor of Cavite, I was always a day ahead. I read everything. We’ll always be a day ahead of everyone,” Remulla noted.

Further, Remulla explained the process is “we gather all the information and we make a predictive model and the rain forecast model. Before it was only the path and the wind, but now we also include the rain forecast.” 

Remulla also highlighted a key lesson learned from Severe Tropical Storm ‘Kristine’ which is the importance of anticipating the depth and flow of expected rainfall. 

“They did not anticipate that within 36 hours, 960 millimeters was dumped in Sorsogon. And that’s a record number. Remember, ‘Ondoy’ was only 480 millimeters,” he added.

The DILG chief stressed that the weather bureau will be releasing guidelines more frequently, adding that four days prior to a typhoon's arrival, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), regional offices and local government units (LGUs) will be notified of possible scenarios. 

“Our timeline now is four days before, because it can be seen on the weather map,” Remulla stated.

“When it’s 2,000 kilometers away from the Philippine area of responsibility (PAR), then we start tracking the storm and initiate the preemptive measures,” Remulla pointed out.

Remulla emphasized that the “system has proven to be effective, as there were zero casualties recorded in Northern Luzon when a major storm hit twice in a row.’’