After June floods, Davao barangays now to monitor rainfall

After the massive flooding in Davao City in June, barangay officials in the area will now be monitoring the amount of rainfall as part of disaster preparedness. Some 24 officials and volunteers from 10 flood-prone barangays and seven members of the City‘s Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (DRRMC) recently attended a Rainfall Monitoring workshop. The workshop was conducted by the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) in partnership with Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart). The training is part of Smart’s Project Rain Gauge program, a rainfall monitoring initiative. Under the program, public school partners and concerned groups regularly collect, measure and record rainfall data, which they send to a website (www.projectraingauge.ph) hosted and maintained by Smart. Established in 2007, Project Rain Gauge has been expanded beyond Smart’s partner public schools under its Smart Schools Program to include proactive barangays that are interested in building rainfall data. A rainfall database helps in the development of a community-based early warning system, especially against flooding. In June, 25 people were confirmed dead while 3,000 families were reportedly displaced by the flooding caused by severe rainfall brought by an intertropical convergence zone to mountainous areas surrounding Davao City. - VVP, GMA News