Subject: FW: Metro Manila urged to prepare for big quake (source: PDI 17 June 2009)

Let us be informed and prepared just in case…

 
Metro Manila urged to prepare for big quake
Experts say 7-8 magnitude tremor highly probable
By Michael Lim Ubac
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:32:00 06/17/2009

Filed Under: Earthquake
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Disasters (general)
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GENEVA, Philippines-The “big quake” feared to hit Metro Manila could happen anytime.
 
This may be a doomsday prediction, but Arjun Kartoch, head of the Emergency Services
Branch of the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
is the bringer of bad news this time, a decade after it was first predicted by
seismic experts.
 
He re-issued the warning that an earthquake with a magnitude of about 7 to 8 on the
Richter scale would hit the nation’s capital region.
 
But although he was sure that the quake would occur, he did not cite a specific
timeframe for the event.
 
He made this announcement on the sidelines of the four-day Second Session of the
Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, which started Tuesday to assess
strategies to reduce disaster losses around the planet.
 
During Tuesday’s taping of the BBC show, “World Debate,” hosted by Nik Gowing at the
Centre International de Conférences de Genève here, Kartoch provided a picture of
magnitude of the tragedy.
 
On the infrastructure side, buildings (hospitals, schools, establishments) and
residential houses would collapse, he said, apparently simulating the impact of the
quake based on urban congestion, population and buildings’ quake resistance.
 
“You gonna have 16,000 buildings destroyed. You gonna have … 150,000 who are
injured,” said Kartoch.
 
Gowing noted that in that “tragedy,” millions of residents of Metro Manila-with an
18 million population-would be displaced.
 
Kartoch said Senator Loren Legarda and officials of the Philippine government
attending the biennial global meeting should prepare for the worst.
 
Legarda was invited to join the debate as Asia-Pacific’s regional champion for
disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation, which put premium on
mitigating measures prior to the occurrence of disasters over the current emphasis
on post-disaster response such as relief and rehabilitation measures.
 
The forum, to be broadcast on July 4 to about 80 million global viewers, had Legarda
with the other panelists-Kartoch, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy’s Civil Protection
Agency, and Edward Borodzicz, professor of risk management at Portsmouth Business
School in the United Kingdom.
Kartoch did not cite a specific study, but was quoting data culled over the years by
the UN OCHA whose mission has been to mobilize and coordinate effective humanitarian
action during complex emergencies and natural disasters, said Emmanuel de Guzman.
 
“Risk reduction is very good and useful, but it should not stop at the point (of
disaster),” said Kartoch, who was skeptical of the risk reduction strategy.
 
Legarda noted that the prediction had been discussed for 10 years now.
 
“Thank God, the earthquake did not happen,” she said, informing Kartoch that
“preparedness is being done (and) we are prepared for that to the limits of our
capabilities and resources.”
 
She said it was unrealistic to relocate now “hundreds of thousands or millions of
people” that could be affected.
 
“But I believe that risk can be reduced,” she said, pointing out that investing in
disaster preparedness and risk reduction by building safe hospitals, safe
infrastructures, and second, by having risk assessment studies in local government
units were essential in mitigating the quake’s impact.
 
“Why build housing projects on earthquake faultlines … at the foot of mountains
where there could be landslides … in coastal areas where there are rising sea
levels and where there could be storm surges?” she asked.
 
The senator said that “investment in risk is an investment in lives, not a cost.”
She cited Albay province’s investment in mangroves and preemptive evacuation in
times of typhoons, and China’s $3 billion investment in flood control which averted
$12 billion in losses.
 
“It’s everybody’s business-international, national, local government units and
communities all rolled into one. Not one sector should be (solely) responsible,” she
said.
 
De Guzman, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) advisor for
Asia-Pacific, confirmed the coming quake, but was unsure when the catastrophic
disaster would strike.
 
“The big earthquake is certainly coming. The question is when? No one can tell. It
can happen today, tomorrow, or next year. But certainly there will be an
earthquake,” De Guzman, who previously worked with the Office of Civil Defense of
the NDCC, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
 
On July 16, 1990, an earthquake with a 7.8 Ms (surface-wave magnitude) struck
Northern Luzon, producing a 125 km-long ground rupture that stretched from Dingalan,
Aurora, to Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya, as a result of strike-slip movements along the
Philippine Fault Zone and the Digdig Fault.
 
It killed an estimated 1,621 people, with most of the fatalities located in Central
Luzon and the Cordillera region.
 
But amidst the latest warning, Legarda expressed optimism that the country could
still prepare for an earthquake.
 
She said this was precisely the reason why the UNISDR was pushing for the
institutionalization of the DRR, integrating them into the national, regional and
local development policies and plans of countries.
 
Legarda, as chair of the Senate committee on health, held an emergency meeting on
Wednesday with officials of the Arroyo administration here to assess the
preparedness of Metro Manila and institute measures to mitigate the impact of the
quake on both population and infrastructure.
 
“These should be done immediately, within the next 30 days,” she said. “We must have
a 30-day prescription of what can be done. It’s doable.”
She also invited to the meeting international experts on disaster mitigation such as
Turkey and Bangladesh, which has championed community empowerment in drastically
arresting disaster fatalities and losses.
 
“We must learn their best practices for possible application in the Philippines in
the light of the OCHA doomsday prediction,” she said.
 
Besides Glenn J. Rabonza, executive director of the National Disaster Coordinating
Council; Bernaditas Muller, the country’s main negotiator for climate change
adaptation; and select officials of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and
Seismology, Department of Health and Department of Science and Technology are
attending the DRR second global session.
 
In an interview, Legarda said the national government, including local government
units in Metro Manila, should immediately assess public edifices such as hospitals
and schools in terms of their structural integrity to withstand such a massive
tremor.
 
The senator said the government should set in place a “metrowide and contingency
planning” to prepare for the quake.
 
Legarda said she would ask the DOH to check the bed capacity of all hospitals in the
capital region, and for the Department of Public Works and Highways to ensure the
safety of commuters and motorists by assessing the quake-resistance of overpasses,
bridges, flyovers and roads.
“Condemned buildings, including school dormitories, must be identified immediately,
so that residents can be relocated to suitable areas,” she said.
 
“In the event of a strong earthquake, the public should be assured of a steady
supply of potable water,” she said, stressing that “lifelines” should continue to be
accessible to the public such as communication, roads and safe transportation
system.
 
Legarda also pointed the need to check the stability of billboards, which dotted
major roads in Metro Manila.
 
“We should examine their capacities (hospitals and schools), identify evacuation
centers like open areas, basketball courts, multipurpose halls that can serve as
evacuation centers,” she said.
 
Legarda said the citizens had a pivotal role to play.
 
“We should encourage communities and families to have contingency plans,” she said,
adding:
 
“What should families do when they are separated? Where should they go? The
contingency planning should be up to the family unit, the basic unit of society.”
 
Even before sessions resume on July 27, Legarda will conduct consultation hearings
to mitigate the impact of earthquake as predicted by UN OCHA.
 
A study in seismic hazard assessment of Metro Manila was published in 2000 in the
Bulletin of Seismological Society of America.
 
The study was conducted by Alan R. Nelson and Stephen F. Personius of the Geologic
Hazards Team, Central Region US Geological, and Rolly E. Rimando, Raymundo S.
Punongbayan, Norman Tuñgol, Hannah Mirabueno and Ariel Rasdas of the Philippine
Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
 
The study across the northern part of the west Marikina Valley fault, which lay only
10 km east of central Manila, indicated a recurrence interval of 200-400 years for
magnitude 6-7 earthquakes on the fault, it said.
 
It said that a recent assessment of the earthquake hazard posed by crustal faults in
cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle, and the economic and human loss resulting
from recent damaging earthquakes in Northridge, California, and Kobe, Japan,
highlighted the need for evaluating potentially active crustal faults in urban
areas.
 
Manila is similarly subject to earthquakes on nearby crustal faults, as well as
earthquakes on more distant plate-boundary faults (such as Philippine fault to the
east of Manila).
 
The study did not accurately determine the time of each faulting event or determine
specific earthquake recurrence intervals, but said that “empirical relations between
rupture lengths and magnitudes of historic earthquakes in similar tectonic
environments also argue for earthquakes of magnitude 6-7 on the Marikina Valley
fault system.”
 
The NDCC said that government has been preparing for the very strong quake.
 
Rabonza noted the intensification of earthquake preparedness drills following the
recent tremor in Indonesia that killed more than 5,000 persons.
 
But Renato Solidum Jr., director of Phivolcs, said government was using earthquake
strength of magnitude 7.2 from the Valley Fault System (formerly known as the
Marikina Valley Fault System) “for planning purposes.”
 
If the government failed to prepare, a quake with such magnitude would affect around
38 percent of residential buildings, 14 percent of high-rise buildings and 35
percent of public buildings in the metropolis, he had said. 
 

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It used to be that spotting a “good” counterfeit bill was impossible for ordinary people. If it was good enough to pass the “look and feel” test, then it was going to take an ultra-violet light or a magnetic ink detector. But for the past ten years, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has been making bills that are easy to check.

The amount of counterfeit money in the US is low enough that most people feel safe taking money with barely a minimal check for counterfeits. Does it look and feel like money? Then it probably is. But have you ever gotten a bill where something—either the bank note or the Please Login or Register to see the link.—seemed a little off? Ever wished you could quickly check to see if it was good? Well, here’s how.

Step 1) Look and Feel
This is as far as most people go, and it’s good enough most of the time. US bank notes are printed on special paper that’s 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. The linen gives it an extra stiffness that’s distinctive. There are also red and blue fibers imbedded in the paper. Bank notes are printed with a process called “intaglio” that leaves ink on top of the paper, giving the money a distinctive texture. The printing is also very high quality, so the lines are sharp and clear, not broken, fuzzy, or blobby.

Step 2) Color-Shifting Ink
Bank notes bigger than the $5 bill use color-shifting ink to print the number showing the denomination in the lower-right-hand corner. Just look at the numbers head-on, and then from an angle. For genuine notes the color will shift (copper-to-Please Login or Register to see the link. or green-to-black).

You can get this far pretty discreetly. The look and feel you’re checking automatically as soon as the bill is handed to you, and you can confirm the color-shifting ink in a quick glance. Going further will require that you hold the note up to the light, which is basically saying that you think you might have gotten counterfeit money. A lot of people hesitate to do that, but it’s the next step if you want to be sure.

Step 3) Watermark
All bills bigger than a $2 now have a watermark; hold the bill up to the light to see it. For the $10, $20, $50, and $100, the image matches the portrait. You can use the watermark to spot bills that have been bleached and reprinted with a higher denomination. The watermark is part of the paper and is visible from the rear of the note as well.

Step 4) Security Thread
All bills bigger than a $2 have a security thread running vertically through the bill. Like the watermark, you hold the bill up to the light to see it. The thread has text with the bill’s denomination and an image that is unique to that denomination. The different denominations have the threads in different places, again so you can spot bills that have been bleached and reprinted with a higher denomination. (The threads also glow different colors under ultraviolet light, but that’s not much help to ordinary folks.)

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• Looks and feels like a US bank note
• Has color-shifting ink
• Has a watermark that matches the portrait
• And has a security thread with text that matches the denomination

Then it’s almost certainly a genuine bill.

What about older bills?
There are still some old bills around, from before these security features were added (starting in 1996). Now that it’s been more than ten years, it’s about time to simply refuse to accept old bills. Bills that old, that are still in circulation—especially high-denomination bills—are much too likely to be counterfeit. If it is genuine, the holder can easily enough take it to the bank and get some new currency, so your refusing to take it is no burden on an an innocent holder of old but genuine currency.

More info
If you’re interested in this sort of thing (the way I am), here are some other pages worth checking out:

• The US Secret Service page on Please Login or Register to see the link.: This page covers spotting counterfeits the old-fashioned way, without using the security features of modern bills.
• The How Stuff Works article Please Login or Register to see the link.: This page actually walks you through making your own counterfeit with a scanner and a color printer. It explains why it’s harder than it looks and how most counterfeiters are usually caught and sent to prison for a long time.
• An article from the St. Louis Federal Reserve—Currency Design in the United States and Abroad: Counterfeit Deterrence and Please Login or Register to see the link.: On how different countries have tried to optimize the trade-offs between fighting counterfeiting, making their money accessible to people with limited vision, and making the money easy for banks and other high-volume users of currency to handle.

By Philip Brewer of Please Login or Register to see the link.. Image source: Department of the Treasury.

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Posted Jun 11, 2009 11:26am EDT by John Carney and Joe Weisenthal in Please Login or Register to see the link., Please Login or Register to see the link., Please Login or Register to see the link.

From Please Login or Register to see the link., June 11, 2009:

The recent buoyancy of the financial markets has created a sense of calm about the economy. The overall sense of panic has gone.

But there’s still a wariness in the air, a feeling that the fragile “green shoots” of the recovery might be stomped out by some new crisis. People are waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Here we suggest 10 things that might stymie our recovery. Some are purely financial events. Others are geopolitical. And one involves these little piggies.

Did your favorite nightmare scenario make the cut?

1. Swine Flu Second Wave: Typically, influenza outbreaks come in waves, getting worse with each one. The very ease with which we seem to have survived the first wave of swine flu may make us vulnerable to a horrific second wave.

2. Commercial Real Estate Collapse: Various commercial real estate deals face trillions in refinancing obligations over the coming years. But the market is practically closed, ensuring massive bankruptcies and restructuring.

Why are lenders so freaked out? Because existing loans are going sour at a pace unlike anything we’ve seen in history. Because of that, even commercial real estate properties with strong cash flows are finding financing extremely difficult to come by.

3. The Option Adjustable Rate Mortgage Explosion: Anyone referring to the “subprime crisis” has got to get with the program. The subprime wave of defaults is basically over. Now the question is, what about all the other types of mortgages? You know, Option ARM, Alt-As and of course, good old fashioned prime mortgage.

The big wave of Option ARM resets has yet to come, and given the drop in home prices, refinancing won’t be realistic. Let’s hope the homeowners can afford their new monthly payments.

4. Global Food Crisis: As we saw last year, the global food supply teeters on the edge of adequacy. Any serious shock–floods in the Midwest, a war in Asia, social unrest in China, political upheaval in Thailand or Egypt–could result in shortages in countries that import large amounts of their food.

5. Israel Bombs Iran: The Obama administration’s openness to the Iranian regime may have the perverse effect of emboldening its nuclear ambitions. Very likely, the fears of the nuclear Iran are over-stated. It would probably behave like most members of the global nuke club, cowed by its own destructive power into behaving responsibly.

But Iran isn’t the only country to worry about in the region. Israel may not be willing to tolerate a nuclear armed Iran, and may choose to strike out to destroy Iran’s nascent nuclear capabilities. This would obvious raise tensions throughout the Middle East. At the very least, oil prices will likely spike and remain elevated following any military action against Iran. This, in turn, will slow the global economy.

6. A Wave of Municipal Defaults: Historically, cities and states don’t default on their loans very much. But as Warren Buffett pointed out, historical results don’t mean jack because muni insurance wasn’t around. Unless it gets a bailout, California may go bankrupt, causing the muni market to seize up, bringing public works and spending to a halt, kneecapping GDP.

At that point, with no ability to borrow, the other states will rush to default themselves, sparing their taxpayers any more pain.

7. Another Bank Run: It seems unlikely, given the government’s implicit guarantee of the banking sector, but it’s always possible that investors or lenders could lose confidence in one of the banks again, prompting a financing run a la Bear Stearns.

If this happened, we’d be back to square one with all the confidence and bailouts since Lehman’s collapse — only, the government would have fewer bullets left in the gun.

8. Runaway Inflation: The Federal Reserve seems confident that it can “land the recovery.” Is it right?

There’s good reason to be skeptical that the Fed will be able to reduce the monetary base before it floods out into the economy, driving up prices and destroying savings. For one thing, the Fed has never really been very good at doing this. By the time the Fed realizes that inflation is taking off, it may be too late.

9. North Korean Missile Launch: Wee dictator Kim Jong II has lulled the world to sleep, performing missile tests on a seemingly daily basis. What was once a cause for alarm now barely merits a bulletin on CNBC. In fact, the dollar has rallied on the nervousness.

But his neighbors in China, South Korea and Japan are freaked out and an actual war, or genuine provocation, could wreak havoc on far eastern trade. This might cause investors to flee towards the dollar, but it would be terrible for markets and economic activity.

10. Chinese Financial Crisis: Most economic discussion of China these days is about how dependent the US government has become on China buying Treasury bonds. But China has lately learned that its own economy is dangerously leveraged on foreign demand for Chinese manufactured goods. The global downturn has helped expose the fragility of the Chinese economic miracle, and worse might be coming.

A collapse of profits in China could very well spark a banking crisis, much like the collapse of real estate prices did to US financial institutions. Very little attention has been paid to the fragility of the Chinese financial system, which is dominated by large, slow, non-transparent, often corrupt state-run banks and centralized decision making. Slowing exports could be the tide that goes out and reveals which Chinese banks have been swimming naked. And the Chinese financial system, which has almost no effective securitization and therefore high concentrations of financial risk, is much less prepared to deal bank failures than the US was.

Of course, this will be bad news for the US. Any financial crisis in China will hurt the demand for our debt, both public and private, driving up interest rates and slowing down the US economy.  This, in turn, would reduce demand for Chinese exports, exposing shaky banks to risk of collapse all over again.