Dagupan, a city yearly devastated by floods, has been selected as one of the five Asian project sites for the Program for Hydro-Meteorological Risk Mitigation in Secondary Cities in Asia (Promise) by the United States Agency for International Development.

The Promise, which seeks to reduce the vulnerability of urban communities through enhanced preparedness and mitigation of hydro-meteorological disasters, is to be implemented by the Center for Preparedness Foundation Inc.(CDP) at a cost of $100,000 (P5.2 million) from February 1, 2006- January 31, 2008.

The other projects sites are Chittagong. Bangladesh; Hyderabad, Pakistan; Kalutara, Sri Lanka and Da Nang, Vietnam.

It was the League of Cities of the Philippines which endorsed Dagupan as the project site to the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, a partner organization of the Usaid, and which chose the CDP to implement the program.

A memorandum of understanding for the project was signed on Tuesday by Mayor Benjamin Lim and CDP President Eufemia Castro-Andaya in the presence of Laura Coughlyn, Usaid’s Mission Disaster Relief Officer in the Philippines.

Lim said Dagupan was a good choice as a project site because it is the catchbasin of floods that occur yearly in the province which result in lost lives and damaged properties. "We hope that through this project, we can minimize risks and give a good chance for people to learn things that they need to know so they can help themselves during disasters," Edgar Nigel Lontoc, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense in the Ilocos, said the country is prone to disasters because it is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Dagupan was devastated by the July 1990 earthquake. "Because of our geographical location, we are vulnerable to natural hazards. Natural hazards are part of natural environment but disasters are not," he said, adding that the built-in environment should be managed so there will be less hazards.

Coughlyn pointed out the importance of disaster preparedness, saying that "disasters are a reality that are here to stay" and even "we in the United States are not immune (to disasters)". "We have hurricanes which are the same as cyclones especially in the eastern coast. (Lately) we had Katrina and the breaking of dikes in New Orleans.

We have our own challenges in flood management. There are the global trends like global warming and the ice caps are declining in size. We have La Niña with Pag-asa issuing a report of increased rainfall, increasing population density. These are realities that are here to stay," She added that everyone has a role to play in disaster-preparedness and she acknowledged the "vibrancy and professionalism of the civil society like the (CDP).