EDITORIAL - Disaster preparedness

After devastating earthquakes hit Haiti and Chile, warnings were raised about the vulnerability of Metro Manila to the next powerful quake. But Filipinos have experienced cataclysmic earthquakes in the past and are aware that the country lies along the quake-prone Pacific Ring of Fire. More troubling than the possibility of a natural disaster were concerns raised about Philippine preparedness for coping with a powerful earthquake and its common offshoot, a tsunami. A business risk consultancy, Pacific Strategies & Assessments, reported last year that Metro Manila would likely be thrown into “a state of chaos” and businesses would be unable to sustain operations in case of a powerful quake.

The country is likely to be just as ill-prepared for a tsunami similar to the one that rampaged across Japan yesterday following an 8.9 magnitude earthquake – the most powerful to hit the country in 100 years. As of last night, time estimates for the arrival of the tsunami along the eastern coasts of the Philippines passed without incident. But with a volcano erupting in Indonesia and the Ring of Fire continuing to show signs of restiveness, it’s not yet time to breathe a sigh of relief.

Residents along coastal communities facing the Pacific Ocean were evacuated and disaster relief teams were placed on standby as the nation braced for the worst. Volcanologists, for their part, renewed their warning that certain parts of Metro Manila and neighboring areas in the east and south lying along a major earthquake fault could see grievous devastation in case the capital is hit by a quake as powerful as the one that struck Japan.

The Japanese, used to earthquakes, took the catastrophe with impressive calm even as they expressed amazement at its magnitude and the destructive tsunami that it spawned. Such calm is possible only in a country that is always prepared for natural catastrophes. In case the worst happens and the Philippines faces a similar disaster, we should aspire to respond to it with something approaching the preparedness of Japan instead of the chaos in Haiti.