Disaster drill

Admit it: did you wake up at 4 a.m. last Saturday for the nationwide “shake drill”?

Me neither.

A colleague said the homeowners in her condominium building agreed to hold an earthquake drill – at 4 in the afternoon of Saturday.

I received a cell phone alert for the shake drill, but I have a long list of reasons why I refuse to be roused from sleep on a weekend for a pre-dawn earthquake drill, the reasons boiling down to one idea: when death comes knocking, there’s nothing I can do about it. So why lose sleep over it?

I’m sure I’m not the only one with this mindset. And I concede that it’s one of the roadblocks in disaster preparedness.

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In Batanes, people have just learned lessons on disaster preparedness in a painful way. About 15 minutes into last Saturday’s shake drill, observed with some enthusiasm mainly in Metro Manila and other highly urbanized areas, a real earthquake struck the island province.

As of yesterday, the death toll in Batanes stood at nine. A Catholic church was destroyed and several damaged traditional houses – a major tourist attraction in the picturesque province – may have to be torn down.

Science has not yet come up with foolproof technology for accurately predicting earthquakes. Even if such technology existed, I don’t think any building could have withstood the magnitude 9 quake and apocalyptic tsunami 128 feet high that flattened parts of eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, killing nearly 16,000 people, with about 2,500 others still missing. That quake was felt from Alaska to Norway to Chile and Antarctica. It caused the main Japanese island of Honshu to move eastward by eight feet, and the Pacific Plate to slip westward by 79 feet.

So should we just leave it to fate to decide whether or not we would survive a powerful earthquake?

There are detailed maps of the Marikina Valley Fault System, identifying its path from Bulacan to Metro Manila and on to Canlubang, Laguna. Yet there has been no exodus from the high-rise buildings, shopping malls, subdivisions and other residential and commercial structures sitting on the fault line.

This attitude is not unique to fatalistic Pinoys.

In New Zealand, I’ve been told that the office of the prime minister in the capital Wellington sits on an earthquake fault. The Wellington Fault runs right through the city center. As far as I know, the Kiwi seat of government is still there, even after the powerful earthquakes that caused so much destruction in the city of Christchurch.

Japan must be crisscrossed with fault lines and has suffered grievous devastation from some of the world’s most powerful earthquakes. But this has not deterred the Japanese from constructing more high-rise buildings, elevated roads and railways, and even subways (which, it bears emphasizing, operate with enviable punctuality; it’s reassuring that the Japanese are involved in the construction of our first subway system). 

But even if the Japanese and Kiwis also believe, like Pinoys, that if you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die (or, as Senator Bato dela Rosa put it, “s**t happens”), they have implemented more measures for earthquake preparedness, emergency response and disaster mitigation.

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Japan, having suffered much from the cataclysms within the Pacific Ring of Fire, has developed what must be the world’s most comprehensive system of dealing with earthquakes.

Disaster preparedness is inculcated early among the Japanese. There are books prepared by the government for different age groups, with detailed instructions, illustrations and photos on what to do in dealing with different types of disasters: earthquake, tsunami, typhoon, flood, fire, you name it.

Some Japanese fire departments operate museum-type centers where visitors, including grade school children, can experience earthquakes of different magnitudes while standing on quake simulators in chambers with sensurround sound and giant video screens. Visitors can also learn how to operate fire extinguishers and get a feel of what happens during a landslide.

Streets in crowded Japanese cities have signs pointing to the nearest disaster shelters and water stations, in case people are stranded and supplies are disrupted. The evacuation shelters are equipped with emergency medical and sanitation facilities.

After the 2011 Great Tohoku earthquake, Japan has moved to improve its tsunami warning system and make buildings and public works infrastructure more resistant to killer quakes and tsunamis.

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Seismologists and disaster experts point out that Japan’s high level of preparedness in fact saved lives during the Tohoku earthquake. Tokyo sounded the warning a minute before the quake hit – enough time to stop high-speed trains and shut down factory assembly lines.

Compare this with the magnitude 9.1 quake and monster tsunami up to 100 feet high that rolled across the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, killing nearly 230,000 people in over 10 countries. Indonesia’s Banda Aceh, the worst hit, lost 170,000 people.

Obviously, we can’t compete with the resources of Japan, the world’s third largest economy, in disaster response and mitigation. Even with all the preparedness, however, Japan has not perfected the technology for predicting earthquakes.

We don’t have Tokyo’s early warning system for quakes, although there are Pinoys who swear by something better: the sudden agitation of animals. When chickens cluck and run like mad, dogs howl and even lizards and cockroaches crawl out in droves, the ground is moving.

The chickens may survive; you may not. If the earthquake strikes at 4 a.m., maybe the chickens will crow and rouse people from sleep, but a powerful quake will still take its toll in lives and property. The level of disaster preparedness can spell the difference in personal safety.