The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) said that it has activated its Disaster Response Team after the explosion of Mt. Kanlaon on Tuesday morning, April 8.
The SRA said it ordered the evacuation of personnel in its research facility in La Granja, Negros Occidental, immediately allocated P4 million to buy emergency supplies.
“We recently activated our SRA Disaster Response Team headed by SRA board member David Sanson and we are on alert, particularly ensuring the safety of our employees. I ordered the evacuation of our research facility in La Granja, La Carlota City in Negros Occidental, with a skeleton crew left behind to secure the facility. All our vehicles are ready to deploy when requested by the local government units,” said SRA Administrator Pablo Azcona in a statement Tuesday.
The SRA said the facility has a total of 187 employees plus 40 field workers. Twenty personnel, mostly security guards, make up the skeletal crew left behind to secure the establishment, the SRA said.
However, the agency said that in the event of a magmatic eruption, and if the alert level is raised to level 4, the SRA’s Bacolod Office will become a temporary evacuation center for its workers.
On April 8, the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (DOST-Phivolcs) raised Mt. Kanlaon’s alert level to 3, which indicated magmatic unrest.
“We have regrouped our disaster response teams and we are closely monitoring the situation in Mt. Kanlaon. We have relief supplies in place if and when needed, and we have also allocated some P4 million for other emergency supplies,” Sanson said.
Last year, when Kanlaon erupted, the SRA said volcanic ash damaged the leaves of sugar canes, reducing photosynthesis capability, and disrupted the natural biological and chemical processes of the soil, reducing sugar yields in the affected areas.
