DAVAO ORIENTAL, Philippines – General Santos Mayor Lorelie Pacquiao suspended office work at City Hall on Monday, November 20, to facilitate engineers’ inspection of local government-owned buildings, three days after the magnitude 6.8 earthquake impacted the Soccsksargen region and other parts of Mindanao.

Classes in all levels in General Santos City have also been suspended since Saturday, November 18, to allow for building safety inspections.

In Davao Occidental, where the epicenter of the November 17 earthquake was, a province-wide suspension of classes in all public and private schools was also ordered on Monday, also to assess the extent of the damage.

Mayor Pacquiao has directed the City Public Safety Office, City Engineering Office, Office of the Building Official, Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), and City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO) to inspect all public buildings, school buildings, and public and private hospitals, and assess whether their structural integrity has been compromised.

But Pacquiao instructed workers from select local government offices to continue reporting for work “in the exigency of service.” This includes employees at the city hospital, lying-in centers, and those involved in frontline services.

At least three people, including a couple who were pinned by a collapsed wall, died in General Santos as a result of the strong earthquake.

The CDRRMO said 541 people were taken to hospitals as of November 18, but only 32 were admitted.

Pacquiao said in an earlier interview many of those rushed to hospitals were due to panic attacks.

Dr. Agripino Dacera, CDRRMO chief, told a news conference on Saturday that the initial assessment showed only minor damage to properties in the city aside from the Buayan Bridge. The old bridge, which links General Santos and a town in Sarangani, cracked.

Dr. Isagani dela Cruz, General Santos City’s Schools Division superintendent, said 30 classrooms and 11 school buildings sustained minor damage, but school officials were waiting for inspection by building safety experts.

Much of the damage was non-structural such as ceilings and wall plasterings, said General City Engineer Emerald Signar.

“Based on the circumstances that we have now and all the criteria that we have, our situation does not merit the declaration of a state of calamity,” said Dacera.

Meanwhile, Ednar Dayanghirang, the regional director of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) in the Davao Region, damage in the whole Souther Mindanao was “minimal,” but officials need time for rapid damage assessment and needs analysis.

Davao’s Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council had raised the alert status of its Emergency Operations Center to red, because the earthquake was strongly felt in the region, particularly in Davao Occidental.

Dayanghirang said the RDRRMC didn’t want to take chances and closely monitored the Davao Region to ensure the immediate mobilization of resources from the regional level, particularly in areas affected by the recent quake.

He said said minor damage to infrastructure has been reported in Davao City and the municipalities of Jose Abad Santos and Sarangani in Davao Occidental. 

The OCD documented 174 individuals in Davao City and four families in the town of Jose Abad Santos who were displaced on Friday. 

The OCD said the supply of electricity is now back in Davao Occidental after it was cut off right after the quake struck.

In a memorandum order released on Monday, Davao Occidental Governor Franklin Bautista ordered all school heads, safety officers, and disaster response bodies to conduct a rapid and thorough inspection of all school buildings to ensure safety and security for all students, teachers, and employees.

Dayanghirang said the people in the Davao Region were “still unprepared” for powerful earthquakes, even though his office, along with all local governments in the region, regularly conducted four earthquake drills every year.

He said they will be conducting simultaneous tsunami drills from the coastal towns of Davao Oriental province up to the coastal towns of Davao Occidental province. 

“All the earthquake drills we conducted before were concentrated in schools. This time, we will do it simultaneously in all coastal villages in the Davao Region,” said Dayanghirang. – Rappler.com