Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Jonvic Remulla on Wednesday, May 27, ordered rescuers to continue search and rescue (SAR) operations at the collapsed building site in Barangay Balibago, reversing an earlier shift to retrieval operations announced by disaster officials after hopes of finding survivors had dimmed.
During an emergency visit to ground zero, Remulla directed all responding units to stand down from a retrieval-only protocol and revert to active SAR operations, citing past cases where survivors were rescued from collapsed structures even after two weeks.
“We are still going. It is still a search and rescue operation. We have not yet lost hope that there are still people alive inside,” Remulla said, pushing back against technical assessments that had ruled out the chances of survival.
The directive overturned the timeline set by the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), which on Monday night declared the rescue phase over after a specialized Life Locator device from Pasig City yielded no signs of life following two days of scanning the ruins.
Disaster officials had prepared to deploy heavy machinery to recover the bodies of 16 individuals still missing beneath the rubble.
Remulla, however, insisted that emergency teams must exhaust every possibility before abandoning hope.
“It’s not stopping. We will continue. Support here will continue nonstop. The mayor, the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP), and all the other agencies are working together to get through all of this,” he said. (Martin Sadongdong)
