Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, Japan...up next...Philippines?
It's been the talk of the town for over a year now. This "Big One" that everyone is expecting. According to the Philippine Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), the great Marikina Valley Fault moves once every 200 years. Guess what? The last time it moved was about 200 years ago. Hence the warnings that the fault is "ripe" for movement. According to a CNN report done a year ago, my country is not prepared for an earthquake at all. Buildings are built directly on top of the Valley fault. The train runs right over it. CNN declared that should the Philippines experience an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 and above....an estimate of 50,000 people will die.
With this in mind, one can't blame us for evacuating our office building when a very mild earthquake hit last night. It was about 6:35..I was in the middle of our online English class. Suddenly, I felt my seat shaking. I looked up and saw that my computer was slightly swaying. Was it just me? I stopped talking...turned around and saw that Boss was looking at me with raised brows. "Naramdaman mo din"? I nodded.
"I have to go now," I said hurriedly to my student, "We're experiencing an earthquake." I don't know if she understood me. Maybe she talked too fast. But my imagination was on the loose. In the blink of an eye, I saw myself being buried in a pile of rubble for days...I saw the faces of my family as they watched the news...I even had a glimpse of my rescue and funeral. The drama, however, was more like a comedy. I can't help but laugh as I replay the scenario in my head. There I was, saying goodbye to my student. As the drama of becoming an earthquake victim flashed in my head, I scooped up all of the food I had on my table...and dumped it in my handbag. I thought that if would be buried under the rubble, at least I wouldn't starve to death. My coworker was funnier. She actually even took the time to run to the freezer to get her McDonald's hot fudge sundae. With a should of alarm, mind you. "Yung sundae ko! Sayang din!" When she had it securely in her hands, she dashed outside towards the fire exit with the rest of the laughing employees.
If there's one thing I learned last night, during the earthquake, it's that WE WERE NOT PREPARED. We had little knowledge of what to do and where to go. Our evacuation was a total failure. It took us about 10 minutes to go down from the 18th floor. People were just way too slow. Some workers from the other office who were tailing us sounded quite annoyed. I couldn't blame them. If another earthquake hit while we were at the fire exit, we would have been doomed. Super doomed. The fire exit was narrow, and the walls were concrete. I didn't even want to imagine what it would be like to be trapped there with about 15 other people.
Thanks to my daily walkathon (sometimes marathon, when I'm really late for work), I wasn't as tired or as out of breath as the others, when we finally reached the safety of the ground floor. The funny thing was, we were unsure of what to do when we got down. We sat right in front of the building. We didn't even know where to go, should an earthquake hit again. We were in the middle of a city. There were tall buildings everywhere. Even the parking lot was surrounded by skyscrapers. Not so safe there either.
The funny thing about people's reaction to earthquakes is that, their first impulse was to update their Facebook status. Some posts were serious, expressing the fear they and gratitude for being safe, while others looked more on the comical side. "There was an earthquake because Brian burped!" Something like that....
Ever since the earthquake in Japan, I had always imagined that my experience would be something similar. I did not imagine it in a negative way. I merely imagined it to prepare myself for the possibilities. What should I do? Where should I go? Questions like that pop into my head every time I enter a building. I always planned my escape route. Kinda reminded me of the Bourne Identity. Hehe.
It's been the talk of the town for over a year now. This "Big One" that everyone is expecting. According to the Philippine Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), the great Marikina Valley Fault moves once every 200 years. Guess what? The last time it moved was about 200 years ago. Hence the warnings that the fault is "ripe" for movement. According to a CNN report done a year ago, my country is not prepared for an earthquake at all. Buildings are built directly on top of the Valley fault. The train runs right over it. CNN declared that should the Philippines experience an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 and above....an estimate of 50,000 people will die.
With this in mind, one can't blame us for evacuating our office building when a very mild earthquake hit last night. It was about 6:35..I was in the middle of our online English class. Suddenly, I felt my seat shaking. I looked up and saw that my computer was slightly swaying. Was it just me? I stopped talking...turned around and saw that Boss was looking at me with raised brows. "Naramdaman mo din"? I nodded.
"I have to go now," I said hurriedly to my student, "We're experiencing an earthquake." I don't know if she understood me. Maybe she talked too fast. But my imagination was on the loose. In the blink of an eye, I saw myself being buried in a pile of rubble for days...I saw the faces of my family as they watched the news...I even had a glimpse of my rescue and funeral. The drama, however, was more like a comedy. I can't help but laugh as I replay the scenario in my head. There I was, saying goodbye to my student. As the drama of becoming an earthquake victim flashed in my head, I scooped up all of the food I had on my table...and dumped it in my handbag. I thought that if would be buried under the rubble, at least I wouldn't starve to death. My coworker was funnier. She actually even took the time to run to the freezer to get her McDonald's hot fudge sundae. With a should of alarm, mind you. "Yung sundae ko! Sayang din!" When she had it securely in her hands, she dashed outside towards the fire exit with the rest of the laughing employees.
If there's one thing I learned last night, during the earthquake, it's that WE WERE NOT PREPARED. We had little knowledge of what to do and where to go. Our evacuation was a total failure. It took us about 10 minutes to go down from the 18th floor. People were just way too slow. Some workers from the other office who were tailing us sounded quite annoyed. I couldn't blame them. If another earthquake hit while we were at the fire exit, we would have been doomed. Super doomed. The fire exit was narrow, and the walls were concrete. I didn't even want to imagine what it would be like to be trapped there with about 15 other people.
Thanks to my daily walkathon (sometimes marathon, when I'm really late for work), I wasn't as tired or as out of breath as the others, when we finally reached the safety of the ground floor. The funny thing was, we were unsure of what to do when we got down. We sat right in front of the building. We didn't even know where to go, should an earthquake hit again. We were in the middle of a city. There were tall buildings everywhere. Even the parking lot was surrounded by skyscrapers. Not so safe there either.
The funny thing about people's reaction to earthquakes is that, their first impulse was to update their Facebook status. Some posts were serious, expressing the fear they and gratitude for being safe, while others looked more on the comical side. "There was an earthquake because Brian burped!" Something like that....
Ever since the earthquake in Japan, I had always imagined that my experience would be something similar. I did not imagine it in a negative way. I merely imagined it to prepare myself for the possibilities. What should I do? Where should I go? Questions like that pop into my head every time I enter a building. I always planned my escape route. Kinda reminded me of the Bourne Identity. Hehe.
About fifteen minutes later, we were requested by the boss to return to work. It felt kind of silly--the whole evacuation thing. I felt as if we had over acted a bit. But I learned that being safe is more important than looking cool. So it was the right thing to do. As we returned to the 18th floor, my coworkers complained of leg muscle pain and dizziness. Then we spent the rest of the evening, telling our students of the "harrowing experience".
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