My brother and I are both studying in Universities far away from home so we have to live in dormitories.  I live in Quezon City while my brother lives in Davao City.  Just recently, we discovered that our cities share one thing in common and that is we live in places that have active earthquake fault lines.  How dangerous is that?  Well, let me say that earthquakes can cause major damage specially around the epicenter.

Just last week, Surigao City also here in the Philippines experienced a magnitude   6.7 earthquake on February 10, 2017.  To date, more than 8 people have died and so much damage was reported.  There continue to be aftershocks which is expected.  Both Surigao and Davao are on the island of Mindanao.  The distance between the two cities is 373 km., so the earthquake in Surigao was also felt by my brother in Davao.

The earthquake was caused by movement in the Surigao-Mati Fault Line. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvocs) found many new cracks in that fault line. Mati City is in the province of Davao Oriental.  Philvocs has predicted that a powerful earthquake (magnitude 7 or more) can strike Davao anytime.  When my brother and I were talking about this, he mentioned that he saw some cracks on the wall of his room in the dormitory he stays in. This would be dangerous if an earthquake hits because we doubt the structural integrity of the building. We decided that he better look for another place to stay in just to be safe.

As for me, I live in Quezon City and my university and most of the dorms in the area sit on the West Marikina Valley Fault Line, which is another active fault line in the country. If an earthquake hits, there will be much damage because it is densely populated urban area. In fact, I  have read that residential areas might have the most damage because of poorer construction standards.  Well, I have looked around my building and it seems strong and it does not sit exactly on the fault line unlike the other dorms.

The Philippines is prone to earthquakes and we need to work around this natural phenomena. We need to build our homes and buildings in a way that they are flexible and can sway with the shaking of the ground during an earthquake. We also need to build as far away from the fault line as possible. This way we can avoid damage and death due to earthquakes.