THE Naga City Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) will finally have a bigger and more accessible modern headquarters within a complex in the fast developing Balatas Development Center in Barangay Balatas.

Naga City Mayor Nelson S. Legacion and BFP Bicol Regional Director Ricardo C. Perdigon, DSC, led the groundbreaking rites last Tuesday morning, along with Vice Mayor Nene de Asis and some city councilors.

City Fire Marshall Marc Allan Consuegra was on hand to give the welcome remarks during the brief program.  Rev. Fr. Marcel Real led the blessing of the site. Also present were representatives from the city’s fire volunteer groups, such as Chin Po Tung and Naga White.

In his keynote speech, Mayor Legacion said that the proposed fire headquarters will be the first to rise in a one-hectare complex, whose land the city government donated to accommodate other life-saving and life-protecting agencies such as a bigger Naga City Police Station, the Center for Safety and Resiliency (CeSaR), the Naga City Disaster Management Office, a Police Forensics Laboratory, and the Naga City Police Station which earlier this year also broke ground for its proposed central headquarters.

All these will rise in the now popularly known Balatas Development Center started by the current city administration that so far has hosted the newly-opened Naga City General Hospital, the first of its kind of a city government-run hospital in Bicol with a separate Out-Patient Department; a modern 2-storey Evacuation Center; the Balatas National High School whose modern structure and facilities make it look like a private high school; and a Livelihood Center. Other constructions within the development site, such as the annex buildings of the Balatas NHS, and a modern-designed dormitel are ongoing.

The lands donated by the city for the proposed complex made it possible for the said offices, which had funds for the construction of their own buildings and equipment, to locate and build their bigger offices in the city at the most expedient time.

Regional Fire Marshall Perdigon, a Nagueno who had been assigned elsewhere in many fire stations in Metro Manila, including Makati before his assignment in Bicol, said he sees the construction of a bigger fire station here which will be the most modern in Bicol as very timely because Naga is fast developing as a highly urbanized city with its burgeoning commerce and industry and increasing population.

Perdigon added that apart from the new fire headquarters, he already foresees the need to construct more fire substations in other parts of the city, which incidentally jibes with the city mayor’s earlier plan to put up such substations in strategic locations in the city’s central business districts and the barangays.

He said he would do the best that he can to provide the Naga BFP headquarters with the most modern anti-fire equipment such as trucks and taller ladders that he saw in other bigger cities in the country, including a fire boat or two to be dispatched along the Naga River.

The Naga BFP headquarters has a fund allocation of P21.1M from the national government to complete its construction.