Earth-shaking warnings

First of all, may I request readers to pray for the people of Myanmar and Thailand who have just experienced a destructive magnitude 7.7 earthquake last week.

- CITO BELTRAN

The death toll in Myanmar yesterday was already at 1,000-plus, not including Thailand. We can only imagine how much fear, pain, and suffering these people and nations will go through in the coming months.

After watching several of the videos taken during the earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand, the subsequent thought for me was—what if it happened in Metro Manila or some other urbanized place such as Cebu, Davao, Baguio, or Tagaytay? How much damage and how many dead will a similar earthquake leave us?

Before you say this is a "typical knee-jerk reaction," may I humbly and sincerely invite you to go through your own home, office, garage, or neighborhood, and look for the danger signs in the event of an earthquake.

Consider large glass panels breaking like grenade shrapnel. Powerlines by your driveway or garden that are so tight they could snap in a sway. The combination of burst pipes and live wires is no fun. Overhangs or plaster cast designs and heavy planters that could break and fall on cars and people.

If you can't run, where can you hide? Hiding under a plywood desk or folding table is no match for a concrete slab from above. A raised heavy-duty steel bed or 6 x 6 wood-framed bed could give you enough protection from being crushed or pinned by concrete from above.

Forty-eight years after the fact, I still remember the magnitude earthquake of 1968 that caused the collapse of the six-story Ruby Tower in Manila. I was nowhere near it, but in our ancestral home in UP Village, Quezon City, cars were being dribbled in the garage.