Phivolcs: Business as usual on day of ‘predicted’ quake

MANILA, Philippines – If you intend to join believers of a “prophecy" dreading a magnitude-8 earthquake in the Philippines on Friday, it would be good to start rehearsing your earthquake drills and look for the sturdiest table to dock under. But if you believe the highest ranking man – and probably the most knowledgeable – in the government agency tasked to monitor seismic activities beneath the Earth, it would be best to treat Friday like any other day. Renato Solidum Jr, the director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), said that receiving such “predictions" was a commonplace occurrence for state seismologists like him. “Normal na sa amin iyan (That’s normal for us). Actually, it’s not as serious as before where via text, we received a lot of them," Solidum told GMANews.TV shortly after being interviewed on radio dzBB where he reiterated for the nth time the unsoundness of the prediction. Solidum said he was just not as convinced with the “prediction" as other unwitting believers are, refusing even to call it as such. “So iyong prediction bukas… Oops, sorry… iyong hula bukas (the prophecy) – it’s not a prediction," he clarified. Asked how he would prepare come Friday morning, Solidum said he would just wake up, head to work, and do the usual monitoring of seismic data. “It will be normal. Business as usual," the Pagasa director said. Solidum said that as long as people are armed with the basic knowledge in seismology and measures to observe when one hits the country, there is no need to worry. Instead of scrambling for cover, Solidum said the best thing to do was not to join in the hysteria and instead educate others of the basic facts on earthquake. A few weeks back, news spread about an earthquake scheduled to rock the Philippines on Friday, July 18. The quake prediction supposedly came as a “prophecy" to a Brazilian psychic called Jucelino Nobrega da Luz. The dreaded news instantly got passed on over the Internet and through word of mouth. The prediction even seeped through the ubiquitous text messaging network of the Philippines. Soon enough, people were raising concerns about the correctness of the prophecy, especially since the Philippines has been jolted in the past weeks by a series of earthquakes in central Luzon, Batanes, and even as far as Davao in the southern portion of the country. The Phivolcs immediately came out with an announcement dismissing the “prophecy" and deeming it as scientifically baseless. Solidum stressed that no technology on the face of the Earth has ever been invented yet that would allow a psychic harbinger, or anyone for that matter, to pinpoint a day in the calendar when a quake would hit. “The exact timing when a fault would move and produce a strong earthquake cannot be determined yet. So far, there is no consistent and very good way of doing an earthquake prediction as to the exact date," he explained. The farthest seismologists can go in “earthquake prediction" is estimating the strength that can be produced in relation to the fault lines that caused it. Anything beyond that would be as good as peeping through a crystal ball to see dates. “Minsan ang mga Pilipino mapagpaniwala pa sa mga manghuhula o mga propeta na hindi naman sigurado iyong basehan o iyong credibility (Sometimes, Filipinos tend to believe in fortunetellers and prophets whose credibility is questionable)," Solidum said. Solidum said that disaster “predictions" tend to peak immediately after an earthquake, volcanic eruption or even a tsunami has occurred. He said that just days after the deadly magnitude-8 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province that killed around 70,000 people last May, similar quake prediction began cropping up via the Internet. He however said that this time around, he is confident that most Filipinos would not fall for the July 18 prediction. “Most people don’t actually care about this. Even my children, I mean, they explained this that it will not happen," he said. - GMANews.TV