Cebu utilities ready for typhoon’s coming

CEBU, Philippines - As they gear up for Ruby’s arrival, utilities advised the public to cooperate in instituting measures designed to better prepare for and cope with the possible aftermath of the typhoon.

In particular, the Metro Cebu Water District is urging the public to store water for household use.

“For drinking purposes, make sure your containers are clean and have covers,” said MCWD spokesperson Charmaine Rodriguez-Kara, in a statement.

The typhoon may affect the water firm’s pipelines, it is best if the public has their own stored water good for at least three days.

MCWD is also preparing to respond to any emergencies that may result from the typhoon.

Kara said they are ready to deploy generator sets to restore water supply in more than 40 percent of MCWD’s service area.

She said heavy and communication equipment are in place to ensure the delivery of water services and that disaster response and leak repair teams and water trucks are now on standby for immediate deployment.

Meanwhile, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines yesterday notified Visayas grid users that it is implementing “Manual Load Dropping,” or what is referred to as rotational brownout.

“This is done to protect the grid and prevent overloading on the 230kV Marshalling-Malitbog line number two,” NGCP said, in a statement.

Rotational brownout is the process of cutting power off in a particular area for a certain period and implementing it for all sectors under a utility firm’s franchise area one at a time.  This is often resorted to during power shortage.

Visayan Electric Company spokesperson Theresa Sederiosa, on the other hand, said that to augment the company’s call center, an auxiliary center would be activated to take the expected surge in typhoon-related calls.

Emergency crews from Davao Light & Power Company have also been brought in to reinforce VECO’s own crew, so that there are now 352 linemen who are  on standby to immediately restore power as soon as the weather permits.

Veco has also prepared 40 gang trucks and 135 emergency crew members after the branches of trees that may snag the power lines and cause outages as early as last week. (FREEMAN)