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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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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.