Earthquake in Dumaguete

My pleasant morning telephone chat with Tita Nini was rudely interrupted when I felt my bed shaking around 8am, last Friday, July 13. For a split second, I thought of my tiny pomeranian and how I didn't know that she was under the bed, probably scratching herself or something. When it didn't stop, I even looked behind me, thinking she might have climbed up the bed without me knowing .... only then did it finally dawn on me ... EARTHQUAKE!!! The french doors were swaying and making those horrible noises ... then it stopped.

Tita Nini and I laughed nervously! I quietly marveled at my stupidity, you know, seemingly accepting even for just a split second that a 2-kilo Pomeranian could move a bed made of solid oak (that even 4 men would have a hard time lifting!) with her cute little legs! Oh well, I must have been THAT engrossed over my chat with Tita Nini.

When our home started shaking again, I told her ... "it's happening again! Ba-bye! I'm going downstairs!!" My first thought was to turn off the main switch to prevent accidental fires from starting. I then called my daughter's school asking if the children were ok. Thank God they were. Abby told me later that she just prayed, asking God to make it stop, while other classmates started crying.

I learned later that the two quakes measured intensity 5 and 6 in the Richter scale, respectively, with epicenter around 18-20 kilometers from Dumaguete City (somewhere between Dauin and Zamboanguita).

For more of this news, click this link: http://news.balita.ph/html/article.php/20070713095458278

This got me thinking about the schools' disaster-preparedness programs. Have the authorities conducted earthquake and/or fire drills with the schoolchildren already? If so, how effective were these? Did they see this actually working during the recent earthquake or was there pandemonium with everything they learned from the drill all forgotten in their panic?

News reports from MetroPost concerning children from Silliman University Elementary Department revealed that the drills they had last year proved futile. The children panicked. I intend to look into this, particularly in my daughter's school.