In the depressing collection of natural disasters that man has always had to deal with, earthquakes are a particularly nasty creature of Mother Nature.
In the first place, they’re totally unpredictable. Tornadoes and hurricanes herald their coming with lots of wind and storm clouds. Volcanoes let off a lot of fire and smoke before blowing up. But earthquakes do not do us the courtesy of advance notice.
You may be lucky enough to live in an area where, for whatever reason, seismographers have planted their measuring instruments that can give you maybe a few minutes’ advance warning from the initial tremors. But other than that, you can be caught thoroughly flatfooted before you’re flattened.
Second, there’s nowhere to hide from quakes. Indoors where you run to in case of typhoons is precisely where you run away from when the ground starts shaking. And while you’re outdoors, you have to dodge loose power lines or falling buildings. Or, if you’re really unlucky, dropping into a crack in the ground that opens up right where you’re cowering.
Third, the aftermath can be just as unsettling—aftershocks, structural damage to your home that you won’t know about, and of course, tsunamis. If you’re by the beach, watch out for the waters rapidly receding. It doesn’t mean premature low tide so you can go pick seashells. It means your time is up unless you get to higher ground, pronto.
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I’ve only had a couple of memorable quake experiences in my life. The first time was in 1990 on a business trip to Manila from the States, during the big one that hit Baguio. I understand that this was a delayed geological response to the Mount Pinatubo eruption that had occurred months earlier.
I was on the second floor of the old Daily Globe newspaper offices on Shaw Boulevard in Pasig when the building started shaking violently. From such a low floor, it was less than a minute’s sprint down the stairs and outdoors. On the street, people were dancing around trying to keep their balance on suddenly unreliable ground.
The second one, many years later in 2006, took place on the top floor of a high-rise office building in Jakarta where I was doing some financial consulting. Right next door was the Ritz Carlton hotel, which had previously been bombed not just once but twice, so when our building started shaking, we all thought that the hotel was under attack again.
Luckily it was nothing that serious. But I can’t forget the feeling of utter helplessness being stuck so high up in a building that took several minutes, literally, to stop its shaking. A heavy metal sculpture toppled off a shelf and narrowly missed me. That was probably the only real danger I faced at the time.
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Today people in Metro Manila have taken to fretting in the wake of a moderate earthquake, together with some aftershocks, that hit the town of Mabini, Batangas last week. It measured something like 5.7, strong enough to get your attention but still too weak to bring down buildings.
Where the damage was really done was psychological. Someone afterwards released an online warning that everyone should prepare for the “big one” anytime within the next three years, which could take as many as 30,000 lives. That’s hardly calculated to calm down people, and PhiVolcs immediately put out an official disclaimer.
I looked at the diagram of the Luzon fault line that caused the quake and cuts right through Metro Manila. It looks like it runs under Shaw Boulevard, the de facto boundary between San Juan and Mandaluyong, less than a kilometer from our high-rise condo building.
On that score, I’m greatly comforted by the fact that our condo was built by a family that also operates a prestressed-concrete manufacturing firm with some pretty big clients, including the country’s largest mall chain. I’d like to think that this mainline mestizo family would have taken care to use their own sturdy product in building our condo, their first foray into property development.
I’m assured that our building can withstand an earthquake of up to 7.2 intensity. Nonetheless, with most estimates placing the next “big one” at up to 7.1, that’s obviously too close for comfort. Perhaps the best advice for anyone, if the quake turns out to be really that strong, is the old-fashioned kind:
Just bend over, hold on to your ankles, and kiss your ass goodbye.
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On that cautionary note, I’d like to greet the Holy Week season together with my readers. Take time out from your time out at the beach, go to Mass, and pray—especially for peace, here at home and throughout the world.
Right now, the USS Carl Vinson carrier group is steaming towards the waters around North Korea in a show of strength against that country’s latest missile launch. If you’re dealing with a certifiable lunatic like grandson Kim, all bets are off.
At the same time, the US launched its own missiles against Syria’s Assad for a chemical-gas attack against a rebel-held city. The use of chemical gas richly deserves reprisal, but when another nuclear power like Russia takes offense at that, there’s reason to get nervous.
For his part, an avowedly isolationist President Trump is suddenly preparing to put American troops in harm’s way on two fronts abroad. Is this part of a cold-blooded “wag the dog” strategy designed only to lift his declining ratings at home?
These tectonic shifts in geopolitics are arriving at the same time as the tectonic shifts in geology we’ve been seeing. As we enter the first month of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, who promised all manner of chastisements for our unrepented evil ways, prayer and reparations this Holy Week are very clearly called for.
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