PIA Press Release
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Region8 local govt units provided with weather monitoring equipmentby Aurora J. Casimpan TACLOBAN CITY, Leyte, Jan 17 (PIA) –- Several local government units (LGUs) in Eastern Visayas had been provided with automatic monitoring equipment by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). The installation of the equipment will boost the disaster preparedness program of the LGUs since the region had been identified as one of the disaster and calamity prone areas is the country. DOST regional information officer Paul Quiñones disclosed that the facilities installed in five provinces of the region are the automatic weather system (AWS), automatic rain gauge (ARG), and water level sensor (WLS). Six units of automatic weather system were installed in the towns of Catarman in Northern Samar, Salcedo in Eastern Samar, and Saint Bernard in Southern Leyte; also in the cities of Tacloban, Maasin, and Catbalogan. Other weather monitoring equipments were automatic rain gauges that were installed inside the school campus which had forged an agreement with the DOST. Rain gauges were installed in Biliran, Calbayog City, Eastern Samar; Catarman, Northern Samar; Palo, Leyte; and San Ricardo in Southern Leyte. The town of Saint Bernard in Southern Leyte was provided with two water level sensors; Ormoc City will also be provided with the same facility soon. It was learned that DOST designed the weather monitoring systems which were all locally made. Cost of an equipment was pegged from P 100,000 to P 200,000. (PIA-8) | 
