Power of the People for Change: The Greatest Scientist of the Philippines: Dr. Pel...

Power of the People for Change: The Greatest Scientist of the Philippines: Dr. Pel...: Everyone, let us acclaim and celebrate the first Filipino and the only one out of two achievers in the world to be conferred the Doctorate...

Power of the People for Change: RCBC Fires Maia Dequito

Power of the People for Change: RCBC Fires Maia Dequito: Recently, RCBC fired Maia Santos Dequito and Angela Torres. Ms. Torres is crying foul and complains  “harassment from RCBC top brass.” ...

Power of the People for Change: Philippine Telcos Are Duping Filipinos, This Is Ho...

Power of the People for Change: Philippine Telcos Are Duping Filipinos, This Is Ho...: Part 2 of a series In our previous post , we complained that sometimes the speed of Smart Communications Internet is just plain zero, zi...

Power of the People for Change: RCBC Can Fire CEO Lorenzo Tan-Maia Dequito

Power of the People for Change: RCBC Can Fire CEO Lorenzo Tan-Maia Dequito: The Senate Investigation into the stealing of United States Dollars Eighty One Million (US$81,000,000) appears to be useless. They have not...

Power of the People for Change: When will Philippine telecom companies stop foolin...

Power of the People for Change: When will Philippine telecom companies stop foolin...: Month after month, one registers the one-month unlimited internet service of Smart Communications through their product SMART BRO. The serv...

Rescue Olympics: Teaching the People How to Survive

Rescue Olympics – RescueLympics

2014 version no. 2

Rescue is a universal concern. simply defined it is bringing a besieged, endangered human or any other living form (referred to as Victim or Casualty) to more safer place and circumstances.

RESCUE OLYMPICS

INTRODUCTION

There are about 29,000-35,000 highly trained individuals in the Philippines alone that are especially trained in rescue. Only about 10% of these individuals are able to participate in saving lives, safeguarding individuals or clusters of people in a community except during severe emergencies that affect their own life and that of their immediate neighborhood.

Within a universe of a 100,000,000 population, these rescue-trained experts will be no match to the coming of major disasters even within their own communities alone considering the ratio of roughly 1:3500.

There is a need therefore to promote and sustain an effort to teach everyone from young to old, males and females, at least the idea of self-rescue.

It is basically not enough to state, “Be prepared for calamity, Be prepared for disaster. Prepare a survival kit consisting of first aid, your important documents, etc.” No it is not enough. It is very important to introduce specific ideas, actions, skills, concepts to the entire population slowly, gradually what it will be required to be able to save one’s self from harm and danger before the onset of and during a disaster as well as after the catastrophe has occurred.

This is the basic vision and the fundamental mission of Rescue Olympics. Centre di Humanes et Societas Inc. believed since 1992 that the numerous highly trained individuals who are capable of conducting rescue, can be converted into virtual teachers of the public and serve as models in their own communities as well.

During the devastation by Yolanda in Tacloban and other parts of the country, especially those that were trained in rescue, had 100% personal survival including those of their own families. This can happen to average citizens, if given the chance to learn how to save themselves. Rescue Olympics determines to do just that.

To accomplish this, a nationwide challenge seeks to pit rescue teams and compete in skills and competence improvement games and challenges. RESCUELYMPICS will be held annually in games designed to heighten the alertness, confidence and expertise.

In essence therefore, Rescue Olympics, designed as a training tool for rescuers nationwide, will be an educational device and forum for our citizenry across the whole country. If broadcast and heard in real time and over and over again on national television and radio, printed on broadsheets and tabloids repeatedly, the concepts will little by little sink in, to the minds of our people and hopefully give them several second chances of enjoying life again, even after chilling and truly dangerous disasters.

SIMULATION

The special characteristic of the Rescue Olympics is that it will simulate or create a mock up of broad range mobilization of several rescue teams to form a rescue task force that will play the role of components of the same task force to attempt on a per team basis the rescue of the designated victim / casualty / patient.

NATIONWIDE CHALLENGE ELIMINATIONS

The skilled Rescue Teams shall qualify and participate in various challenges each year. The following are the games or challenges:

1. Extrication of Victim-Casualty trapped below ground
2. Extrication of Victim-Casualty on water
3. Extrication of Victim-Casualty trapped at high angle

Each team shall consist of six player-members:

1. The Team Leader
2. Medic
3. Two Technical Rescue Personnel; and,
4. One Personnel in charge of admin support to operations.

During RESCUELYMPICS, the Teams are presented several and unique conditions that challenge their capability to immediately and on-the-spot, form a Rescue Operational Plan (Rescue OP) and successfully extricate the casualty in the allotted time.

The scenarios include the following:

30 minutes Complex Rescue - The team performs a Triage and rescue three victims two of whose conditions worsened from an air line crash.

• 20 minutes Equipment No Holds Barred – No limit to the types of Rescue Equipment will be used to rescue one stable and entrapped victim.
• 20 minutes Equipment By Selection Only – Rescue that focuses only on very small tools and will not allow the use of sophisticated Rescue Equipment.
• 10 minutes Race Against Time – The teams perform a rescue of a victim whose condition has severely deteriorated and has only a few minutes left to live before being transferred to a medical facility.

GENERAL GOALS AND RULE ASSUMPTIONS

The project is proprietary to the Resource Recovery Movement and Executive Safety section of Centre di Humanes et Societas Inc., the Kampo Uno Rescue in partnership with BGen. Santiago Laguna of the Republic of the Philippines Bureau of fire protection and emergency rescue service (designated government lead First Responder) as well as the Office of Chairman, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) as continuing joint pursuit with that agency for survival from risks brought about disasters.

The project originally determined to achieve the goal of assisting the first responder agency of acquiring adequate and improved communication base radio and portable hand sets as well as safety gear during rescue missions.

The objective is to challenge rescue - emergency service personnel to bring them to world class fitness and proficiency.

It also aims to raise the public consciousness of the global problems of demise and injury arising from unsafe practices, hazards in the environment among other important considerations.

Because it is a public event, it aims to promote the concept of self-rescue among the citizens and therefore increase their chances of safety, survival, avoidance of danger situations and minimization of risks in their own immediate environment and in the community as a whole.

The simulated nature of the competitions also seek to educate the public of the need to combine, pool talent, resources, time, commitments in order to effect successful life saving undertakings in limited conditions.

The proprietor does not reserve exclusive rights in the implementation of these games. A main implementor may be an independent organization coming from outside of the proprietor organization.

General rules and regulations are as follows:

The main implementor may be an independent organization instead of the proprietor under the rule that any proceeds from the annual event shall be shared between the Major Event Sponsor-Implementor and the proprietor on the following basis calculated from gross receipts:

First responder agency and
Major Event Sponsor-Implementor       - 80%
Proprietor                                   - 20%

The main implementor shall engage the services of a reputable accounting-auditing firm to act as the accountant-comptroller for the event.

Proprietary owners of Rescue Olympics (RescueLympics) will raffle the final set of Judges selected and provided to the proprietor by the Major Event Sponsor-Implementor.

Contestants shall pass the Registration process to be considered contenders in the Rescue Olympics (RescueLympics).

Winners (Rescue Team) shall be provided incentive and recognition by the Major Event Sponsor-Implementor, first responder agency, the MMDA and other cooperating authorities.

Shown in the following Sections are the Contest Rules of the Rescue Olympics.

1 – URBAN RESCUE COMPETITIONS

2 – WATER BORNE RESCUE COMPETITIONS

3 – AIR BORNE RESCUE COMPETITIONS

4 – MASS CASUALTY INCIDENT RESCUE COMPETITIONS

5 – HIGHLANDS / MOUNTAIN RESCUE COMPETITIONS

Acknowledgments:

The template of the Rescue Olympics Urban Rescue Category for Metro Manila draws nearly its entire contest concept and rules from the Mine Safety and Health Administration of the United States and Leon County, State of Florida Rescue policies and procedures - Glossary of important terms.

To all of the individuals and organizations that provided useful ideas and concepts that cannot all be named here the authors would like to express their heartfelt gratitude.

July 5, 2014

Centre Humanes + Societas

centrehumanes@gmail.com

communitysafetysummit@yahoo.com

asiacommunications@msn.com

09212261611 09162728844 09174760651

Forecast of damage to Philippine power sector

The forecast of the international weather watch community for selected parts of Asia is light to heavy rain. For Manila, Philippines and major cities like Cebu, Davao, other parts of the Southeast Asian country, varying forecasts of Tuesday-to-Friday (August 5-8) continuous rains and Wednesday-to-Friday (August 6-8).

PAGASA predicts gale force winds during the same periods mentioned above.

It is inevitable that this will impact once more upon power facilities. If countermeasures are still not being undertaken to buffer the effect of heavy rain and gale force winds brought about by Typhoon Halong (Philippine code Jose), the public may once again anticipate possible power outages in selected areas in the country.

While media reports that the typhoon has weakened over time, it must be noted that storms are invariably finicky and can regain strength at any time. On numerous occasions, typhoons that made landfall in the Philippine area of responsibility (PAR) and exited after some time, gather greater momentum and returns for another landfall in the PAR.

As the forecasts go, there is more rain than powerful, destructive winds that indubitably are the cause of storm surges.

As earlier cautioned on July 13, 2014, necessary steps must be taken to forestall sustaining great but unnecessary damage to power facilities. Thus it is most strongly suggested that, despite the burden of cost, retirable and extremely depreciated installations need to be condemned and replaced. Retrofits and repairs have to be conducted, more so now than ever before.

More efficient and more effective monitoring systems have to be put in place to pinpoint at once all kinds of non-regular performance of components of the distribution system.

Needless to say, the downtime and the cost to the power supplier but most of all the public at large becomes too enormous to bear when stopgaps that are doable are not put in place while there are occasions to do so.

Furthermore, appropriate new technologies for safeguarding the distribution process from tripping or sustaining enormous damage that will surely entail costly repair and rebuilding, ought to be acquired or harnessed to their fullest. More often than not, new methods and technologies form part of the set of stop gaps that power service providers must have to have better staying power.

It is possible that Meralco did not have good pro-active measures, a keenness to acquire or harness new technologies and techniques because it sank into the quagmire of debts amounting to staggering amounts like hundreds of millions to billions of US Dollars. As a result, Meralco today, is 51% owned by PLDT that is run by Mr. Manuel V. Pangilinan that in turn is taking orders from Indonesian and Malaysian investors (Salim Group) that holds the bigger stake in PLDT.

The irony is that, both PLDT and Meralco, are engaged in public services that ideally, should never be in the hands of foreigners as much as humanly possible.

Any enterprise in the power sector that will suffer the same fate as that of the Fukushima Power Plant (of Tokyo Electric Power Co.) knowing that pro-active measures could have been taken in advance, would be foolish to absorb losses that could really be avoided in the first place. If the public sector is vigilant, such utility corporations should be stripped of their license and permit to operate electric power distribution services and the opportunity needs to be handed over to more competent and qualified service providers.

A collage of images of damaged power utility facilities alone should give a hint as to the urgency of undertaking advanced planning and early countermeasures, particularly in these times of worsening calamities.

July 15-18, 2014 Philippines

Around the rest of the country and in South China (lowermost photo), the impact of Glenda on installations was staggering. (Photo credits: ANC - Yahoo; AvaxNews - Adrian Ayalin; Philippine Daily Inquirer; Straits Times) 

July 19, 2014

Posted under themes:

damage, installations, Sorsogon, typhoon #Jose, #Halong, power utilities,pro-active measures