For a country like the Philippines that is highly vulnerable to risks of disasters with concomitant loss of lives and property, institutional arrangements on preparedness, emergency management, and relief or response are bound to be subject to intense scrutiny especially in terms of responsiveness, effectiveness, and accountability. While the Hyogo Framework for Action on building resilience to disasters calls for a clearly defined coordination structure with decentralized mechanisms and informed engagement, it likewise seeks to establish who has overall responsibility in a disaster. Observations contained in a Commission on Audit (COA) 2014 report, for example, are telling especially given the complexity of large-scale disasters: “…a multi-sectoral, multi-agency and multi-level approach renders it difficult to come up with an appropriate and immediate response, thus delaying critical disaster response and recovery.” Also, “…whenever authority is shared, responsibility is dispersed and resources are scattered, emergency management, command, and control can hardly operate in an expedient manner.”