PH rescue team in quake-hit Turkey to help fortify preparations for ‘Big One’

Rescuers carry 20-year-old survivor Ibrahim Kantrji, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, February 10, 2023.( REUTERS)

MANILA, Philippines — The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) on Friday said the deployment of the Philippines’ 82-man inter-agency rescue unit to earthquake devastated Turkey and Syria will is a learning experience that can help prepare the country for a major earthquake, or the so-called Big One.

“We need to know their best practices, on how we could apply it,” Alejandro told reporters in an interview in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.

“It’s actually a learning for us because this is the first time we send an interagency team to this extent,” OCD spokesperson Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said.

“Their experience will be helpful for us to improve our capacity and capability [for] — I hope it does not happen — the Big One wherein we would become the receiving end of the same kind of assistance later,” he added.

The inter-agency search and rescue team is on its seventh day of operations since arriving in Turkey on February 9.

 The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 has claimed over 41,000 lives as of Friday.

 The so-called Big One— or a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hitting Metro Manila — would lead to at least 52,000 deaths, and 500,000 injuries,  according to the study of risk assessment and consultancy firm PSA Philippines Consultancy Inc. published in 2019.

  gsg