The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), is the government agency that is charged with the responsibility for Seismology, or the science that deals with earthquakes. It was established thru Executive Order No. 984, on September 17, 1984.
In the United States of America, the primary government agency that studies earthquakes is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This American government office conducts research on earthquake causes and effects, monitors and reports on seismic activity, and assesses earthquake hazards.
An earthquake happens because there is a tectonic shifting of the earth’s crust and the apparent movement that takes place underneath. It is the PHIVOLCS that is our source of such information as the epicenter of the tremor. I understand that the epicenter is the very place on top of the rupture point. It was, however, from the report of the USGS that I got the information that the epicenter of the quake last Tuesday evening, September 30, was about nine kilometers southeast off the shore of Barangay Calape in the town of Daanbantayan. The USGS reported that a fault could be found there. With a depth of the rupture to have taken place only 10 kilometers, it was considered shallow such that the first vibration called in seismic science as the P wave, reportedly the strongest and fastest vibration travelling 5-12 kilometers per second, hit Daanbantayan first. The destruction that followed in Bogo City, Medellin, and other towns, is graphically carried in various social media platforms.
So much for that. This article is not about the unpredictability of earthquakes and other natural disasters. When I had the chance to visit the USGS in California, an official informed me that notwithstanding the advances of science and technology, they are nowhere near predicting when an earthquake is to happen. They expect the so-called ‘Big One’ anytime but they cannot say, for certain, when. He talked about the Great San Francisco Earthquake that occurred on April 18, 1906, registering magnitude 7.9. He further said that the tremor hit near the center of the city. Accordingly, the devastating fires that followed destroyed much of the city, killed an estimated 3,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
True to the off-tangent nature of this column, this article today is a kind of revision of the few of my earlier writeups. I am talking about sanctuaries which I suggested to our leaders to construct years ago.
I said then, as I say it now, there is a need for the government to build structures in anticipation of calamities like typhoons, floods and fires. I failed to include earthquakes in the enumeration of cataclysmic disasters because of their rarity. But with the devastation of some localities in the northern part of our province caused by the shaking of the earth, the idea of establishing sanctuaries is now an inescapable need. Government planners have a lot to do to meet such emergencies.
The structure that I suggested in my previous articles must be a place to function as a command center from where to respond to emergencies. It has to house identified first responders like firemen, policemen, relief and rescue personnel, and doctors and nurses in comfortable accommodations that do not neglect the demands of privacy rights. Putting them safe and secure under one roof makes communication fast and coordination of needed actions efficient.
In the building, there must be maintained radio and other forms of communications that connect to barangays, firefighting equipment, rescue implements, relief goods, and adequate medical needs and kits. In my earlier articles, I also cited the necessity of providing immediate housing to victims of calamities. The ‘sanctuary’ will answer this. People must not be brought to the schools because these structures are designed for entirely different purpose. Really, education must not be compromised.
Years have passed since my first article calling for the construction of sanctuaries. The havoc wrought by last Tuesday’s earthquake makes it imperative for our leaders to act.