Preparing for the Big One (and Hoping it Won’t Come!)

Disaster preparedness runs by the motto, “Expect the worst but hope for the best."

            It took my sister living in far-off Germany to open the awareness. One night, she googled the “Marikina Valley Fault line” and came up with a wealth of fascinating – and at the same time alarming – information that she had to email me about it. Maybe us, urban Filipinos, living near and around that huge split in the earth’s crust, we’ve taken it for granted that it will stay just like that -- frozen in time -- forever. 

So it had to take somebody far removed from our complacency and indifference to point out a new and fresh fact:  that this Valley Fault’s long sleep is feared up. Reports at the website of the Philvolcs (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) at www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph warn that the fault line is due for “movement” because it hasn’t shifted in 200 years. Its last movement was in the 17^th century. We are now in the 21^st.

We have a chandelier which I look at when I feel any earth movement. If it sways, there's an earthquake; if it doesn't maybe it was just the dog scratching under my seat!

                In 2004, a study was done on the impact of an earthquake on the national capital region conducted by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). In 2010 last year, urban planner and architect Felino Palafox Jr updated this and submitted it to Malacanang. Maybe the timing was not in “tune with the times” because Manila was relatively disaster-free that time. President Aquino’s spokesman took his proposal lightly and called Palafox an “alarmist.”

Palafox will have his day. History has always proven that forward-thinking leaders who were ridiculed for upsetting a people's comfort zone often ended up right.

There’s nothing wrong with disaster preparedness. It doesn’t mean you expect doom -- or that you will invite it. Military strategists are trained to think of the worst possible scenarios from the enemy and to prepare for them. Should the enemy attack, they’ve covered all the possible movement beforehand. Should the enemy not attack – well and good! Isn’t that what everybody hopes and wants?

            I went through all the sites provided by the Google search engine about this Marikina Valley Fault line (or more correctly called the West Valley Fault line), searching for that one right map that would show up my neighborhood clear as day. Finally, www.nababaha.com/marikina_fault/marikina_valley_fault.htm; so I looked it up. The map was revealing. Two of my friends whose homes along the Blue Ridge subdivision which I suspected were at the edge of the fault (because a cliff was at the end of their properties) were actually a few miles away from the route of the Valley Fault line. You mean to tell me the land plunged several meters below the edge of their properties yet that didn’t mean they were on the fault line? Talk about their landscape being "redesigned"!

           What about those streets in pricey subdivisions where the fault line clearly runs underneath their mansions? Oh my. I’d use my money to plan a getaway from there. Better to be safe than be sorry for being in the stupor of such denial.

My friend Fely left me these 3 wrought iron candle holders and they're beautiful to use during a candle lit night. But they can easily topple over. I secured them (discreetly) with nylon string.

Closeup of the strings.

            One local television news report interviewed informal settlers living directly on  top of land warned by Philvolcs authorities as headed for liquefaction in the event of a major tremor. The reporter asked a woman if she was aware of this and if she had any plans for addressing this hazard. The woman looked guiltily around her, said no she hasn’t any such preparation. Then she burst out fatalistically, “Kung oras mo na, oras mo na (If it’s your time, it’s your time!)!” referring to the inevitability of Death's call. Her female buddy, to silence the TV reporter, interjected loudly, “God is with us!”

            This denial leaves one the excuse not to face the emergency. When I called our neighborhood handyman, Rudy, to drill some concrete nails in the wall because I wanted to bolt some tall cabinets there -- and why -- Rudy looked at me with wide eyes and said defiantly, "Hindi mangyayari yan (That will not happen)!" referring to the reason why I was doing this. I had to "readjust" his thinking.

            I sought out my neighborhood. Hey, we’re pretty far (sort of). Our house sits on adobe rock typical of many Quezon City properties and is on rather high ground. When the famous Ondoy typhoon in 2009 swallowed most of Metro Manila underwater, neighbors remarked our area was like being surrounded by a “moat.” There were floods on all four corners of our neighborhood but we stayed on dry land.

But are we really that “far”? The 1990 earthquake of Luzon involved the Philippine Fault Zone, bigger than the West Valley Fault. One of its splays, the Digdig fault made a move. The movement was felt for 20,000 kms. from the Bicol region up to the Cordillera mountains. The Digdig starts at the eastern side of Luzon then crosses central Luzon north of Manila. It doesn't even pass anywhere near the metro. The diagonally running Digdig fault movement had an intensity of 7.8. (This earthquake's massive energy collected underground and exited the following year out a mountain top which people never suspected was a volcano because it didn't have a crater -- Mt Pinatubo). The epicenter of that 1990 earthquake was in a remote town called Rizal in Nueva Ecija. Thankfully, Manila was marginally damaged yet that tremor rolled the streets of Metro Manila as if the city was on top of a bobbing sea (I saw this unusual movement happen down Aurora Blvd when the quake struck at 4:26pm in July. It was like the street and buildings were on a water bed!). In faraway Baguio the famous Hyatt Terraces toppled like a stack of playing cards killing tourists, some just having an afternoon coffee with friends, and hotel guests.

I leave you to imagine what would be the worst case scenario in your respective areas. In general, there may be no electricity to open your TV so you can check the news, no water might pour out your faucets, no cellphone service to contact friends or relatives because the servers might be down, there may be no internet, no landline, flyovers and bridges are collapsed, and streets are blocked with debris. Traffic lights are down, the drugstores and food stores are closed, and gas stations can’t load your tank. The city will be cut off; provisions can’t come in because major roads are blocked with toppled buildings. You can’t go anywhere either to check on loved ones because even secondary streets are barricaded with obstructions. The 2004 JICA study mentioned above even predicts Manila could be cut into 4 parts, each part isolated from the other due to collapsed roadways, flyovers, and bridges.
                What now, urban sophisticate?

Remember, disaster preparedness does not mean you expect the end of the world is sure to come upon you (and so it will happen).  You’re just covering all the possible territories that could happen. You can go from simple preparations such as stocking up on grains and water, to the big budget plans such as installing solar energy to power your house (or moving to a less hazardous address). If it happens -- and it may be less worse than expected -- you’ll not be left totally devastated.
               I still have a lot to do, other than just bolting things around the house. I have to stock up on canned goods and bottled water, store grains such as beans and mongo, and if I can do this, collect rainwater in plastic drums and keep them around (covered). When we were growing up, my dad, a survivor of the Bataan Death March and a USAFFE war veteran, had the habit of collecting rainwater in big drums. It was a strange practice to us that time because nobody else that we knew did this. During the summer should any of the drums be depleted (for example, to water the plants or wash the car) he would fill it up at once with a hose from a nearby tap and cover the drum with a lid. He also installed a special tank for our drinking water.
             We kids used to make jokes about this. Why was our father storing so much water? Just turn on the faucet! We were too young to understand, not having experienced much about life yet. But we were under the wing of a man who had seen life -- and had seen a lot. This went on for some years. Then a massive typhoon hit Manila and the city had no water, electricity, or telephone (there were no cellphones yet) for days because of the destruction. Water service was the last to be restored many weeks later. But we had water all that time. My dad's disaster preparedness paid off. 
               I still have to scan important documents (property titles, contracts, birth certificates, etc) and email them to my siblings abroad so they have a copy in case something happens to the original papers here. Even the combination numbers of the vaults which my dad left behind -- I have sent already.
               All computer files from the PC I copy to an external hard drive which the more portable laptop could open should there be no electricity.

Most homes keep a First Aid kit in their bathrooms. Is it because the family expects accidents and turbulence to fall upon their lives? No they don’t.

Disaster preparedness is like that. Just keep everything in place. Then go on with your daily life.

We have a pantry room and it would be disastrous if all those breakables slide out should the earth rock. We have unused jalousie blades from old windows from the past. They've been in the garage for years. I had them cut in half at a glass and aluminum shop and nailed them at the end of the shelves to act as a barricade. 

A clock is another breakable. Hang them on hooks -- not on nails.

We developed our backyard to grow vegetables to add to our food. I even allowed Lourdes, who loves to grow them, to plant alugbati (a kind of spinach vine) on our front garden trellis. I hate the taste but thankfully, the dogs have no complaints (it's blended fresh into their dog food).

BOLT all your cabinets (you'll need two; a small size for the left door to hold it secure inside and a bigger one for both doors outside) so your precious dinnerware will not fall out when the ground rolls. I'm still thinking how to hold the china in, though, because a recycled jalousie blade is too low a barricade when we tend to stack the plates up. But I told Lourdes to make it a habit to always bolt the kitchen cabinets (above photo) during the day. The 1990 earthquake, I reminded her, struck in the middle of the afternoon. These things don't occur only in the early morning.

Toby expends restless energy by howling with Packy as the tooting melody of an ice cream cart passes by. In a joint study between scientists from the University of the Philippines and authorities from the Philvolcs entitled "Quantifying Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Premonitory Animal Behavior of the July 18,1990 Luzon Earthquake," dogs in the town of Rizal, Nueva Ecija had bayed (a deep-throated howl, not the give-it-all-I've-got howl Toby is demonstrating above) that afternoon before the quake struck. What dogs howl in the afternoon? That would be all the more ominous. The dogs in Rizal had warned of a coming danger -- but who was listening?