Evacuations bring out the best in Albay teachers
LEGAZPI CITY, Albay — When hundreds of evacuees rushed to the Bagumbayan Elementary School following an eruption of Mayon Volcano last January 22, teacher Lani Robrigado had to dash to the area even if it was already 1 a.m.
As the designated Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (DRRMC) coordinator, Lani had to make sure that their school will be open to the evacuees — even if it meant leaving her only child in their house in Barangay Tula-Tula here in the wee hours of the night. She had to stop a motorcycle driven by a total stranger to beg him to bring her to the school some two kilometers away.
“I was no longer thinking of my safety. All I had in mind were the evacuees because I knew that some of them are lactating mothers; most of them are children and senior citizens,” Lani recalled as she sat down with The Manila Bulletin for this interview.
The moment she arrived at Bagumbayan Elementary School, she was quick to open the doors of the classrooms to usher in the first wave of evacuees. She designated rooms for each of the families and briefed them on the evacuation protocol.
Fortunately, her other co-teachers also arrived and assist in the pressing tasks. All of them knew the drill. This is not the first time Mayon has driven its closest neighbors to their school, anyway.
Still, her co-teachers pitied her and prodded her to go home. It was 4 o’clock in the morning. “I went home to prepare my child for school… I had to go back at 6 a.m. because we knew that there would be thousands more of evacuees arriving,” said said.
“It would have been different if my husband were here,” she thought, but he is a soldier and had to be assigned somewhere very far away.
Past 6 a.m., Lani was right. Thousands of evacuees from Barangay Buyuan which is located within the seven and eight kilometer danger zone began to flock the schools, seeking refuge from the wrath of Mayon.
As soon as all the evacuees were settled, all teachers had to meet to discuss the division of labor inside the evacuation centers — teachers by day; telecom operators, receptionists, security guards, psychologists and even janitors and janitresses by night.
In an instant, Lani’s life changed. This is now the life of more than 2,800 teachers in the three cities and municipalities of Albay since Mayon erupted. And it won’t change until the volcano calms down on God-knows-when.
Camp managers Bagumbayan Elementary School, which is located just a few meters away from the Albay Provincial Capitol, is the host of the biggest number of evacuees in the province. The number of evacuees here peaked to more than 5,000.
Due to the lack of personnel to attend to this big number of evacuees, school principal Ma. Evelyn Grollo had to tap all the school teachers to do additional work at the evacuation center.
This meant fulfilling the job as operators of free calls afforded by a telecoms company; receptionists to the donors; point persons of ambulances and hospitals; and troubleshooters of problems experienced by evacuees.
So, Ms. Grollo also makes sure that her pool of mentors would have enough time to rest since they still teach during the day. “They also have to rest, that is why we ask for the assistance of barangay officials to substitute the teachers after 10 p.m.,” she said,
In Bicol National High School, school principal Ma. Vilma Bronoso, said that they have to assign at least two teachers who would sleep inside the schools to act as night shift camp managers for evacuees of Barangay Lidong in Sto. Domingo town.
“We have to do it so that the evacuees have someone to go to in case they need assistance and for any kind of emergencies,” Ms. Bronoso said.
Carpenters, too
When classes resumed two weeks ago, Lani said they have to ask the evacuees to leave the classrooms and wait outside until the classes end in the afternoon.
“But we teachers could not concentrate, and even the pupils, too, because from time to time, there would always be someone entering the room to get food and their stuffs,” she said.
And because the temporary learning centers (TLSs) are not yet constructed due to manpower and budgetary problems, Lani said they decided to construct temporary learning centers on their own from the old materials in the recent evacuations.
“So we worked for several hours building tents and temporary learning centers where we could hold the classes and for the evacuees to stay inside instead,” said Lani. “We pity the lactating mothers and senior citizens who would wait outside amid the hot weather and sometimes rain. That’s why we did it,” she added.
But their biggest problem was garbage segregation and cleanliness. The classrooms bear the smell of human congestion.
“We teachers, with the help of our pupils, are the ones cleaning before and after classes. Fortunately, the cash-forwork program was introduced that is why we now have a lot of helping hands,” said Lani. Labor of love Unlike the evacuees who would receive P292 per day for their work in the evacuation centers, the teachers have no additional pay for their additional workload.
Apparently, none of them can refuse the big responsibility even if they are not paid a single centavo for their extra service. It is an order from the Department of Education (DepEd) for them to render assistance to the evacuees.
“Of course, it is very hard for us because we also have our own families to attend to. But we have to help them because their condition is really pitiful,” said Lani.
Volcanologists are yet to determine when the Mayon rumblings would end but this early, teachers attending to evacuation centers are stressed out.
And what further aggravates their situation is the thought that after the evacuees leave, the mess and damage to the school will take a long time to repair due to the usual delay in the release of funds for such concerns.
“We have to do the cleaning and repair,” said teacher Lani. “But no complaints; just call it labor of love,” she said.
Sulfur dioxide emitted from Mayon Volcano has significantly reduced but alert status remains at level 4.
Sulfur dioxide emission tends to increase through time as magma degasses with increasing rates as it moves up from great depths beneath the volcano, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) explained.
However, based on Phivolcs 24-hour monitoring, sulfur dioxide emission was measured at an average of 336 tons per day since February 9. This is significantly lower than the 2,525 tons per day last February 7.
Phivolcs added that Mayon Volcano’s activity in the past 24 hours was characterized by near continuous lava fountaining, lava flow, and degassing from the summit.
Sixty-six successive lava fountaining episodes have been recorded since Friday.
Phivolcs observed discrete episodes of lava fountains lasting three to 46 minutes that were accompanied by rumbling sounds audible beyond 10 kilometers of the volcano summit.
Incandescent lava fountains 200 meters tall generated steamladen plumes that rose up to 800 meters from the summit before drifting northeast, it added.