Philip­pine Earth­quake trig­gers tsuna­mi alert
The Philip­pine Insti­tute of Vol­canol­o­gy and Seis­mol­o­gy (Phivolcs) has now lift­ed its tsuna­mi alert after a 7.6 mag­ni­tude under­sea earth­quake hit east-coast vil­lages. At the ready for the worst were mem­bers of HERO, the Ham Emer­gency Radio Oper­a­tions, as the strongest earth­quake in more than two decades occurred in that coun­try. It killed one per­son in a col­laps­ing house, knocked out pow­er in sev­er­al towns, caused min­i­mal dam­age but there was pan­ic about a tsuna­mi and evac­u­a­tion did occur.
The pro­longed ser­vices of HERO seemed not to be required this time although its mem­bers were quick­ly on the emer­gency chan­nels of 144.740 MHz and 7.095 MHz last Fri­day night.
How­ev­er Phivolcs record­ed only a small 20 cm rise in wave height and not the life-threat­en­ing tsuna­mi that can be expect­ed to occur with an earth­quake of that size. Sim­i­lar warn­ings were issued in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries from Indone­sia to Japan, and for Pacif­ic islands as far away as the North­ern Marianas.
Almost 200 after­shocks were felt from the big quake in the areas of Visayas and Min­danao late on Fri­day, but offi­cials are now facil­i­tat­ing their order­ly return of evac­uees. Dis­as­ter offi­cials describe the earth­quake as a wake-up call to fur­ther earth­quakes in the so-called Pacif­ic-rim of fire.
In Feb­ru­ary this year a 6.8 quake killed 51 and left more than 60 peo­ple miss­ing in the Negros and Cebu regions. An earth­quake mea­sur­ing 7.9 killed thou­sands in the area of Luzon on July 16, 1990. The coun­try has suf­fered recent severe floods, includ­ing 80 per cent of Mani­la under water recent­ly due to heavy sea­son­al mon­soon rains.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.