PH Businesses, Building Owners Urged to Have Earthquake-Resilient Buildings

Businesses and building owners in the Philippines are highly urged to be resilient to disasters, especially in the event of a destructive earthquake, according to Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) Director Renato Solidum Jr. during a Bank of the Philippine Island (BPI) webinar.

The agency chief added that building owners should have their buildings be built to withstand an Intensity VII earthquake.

As the Philippines is situated in the Pacific ring of fire, the country is constantly exposed to effects brought about by natural hazards and climate change, to which businesses should address through the reduction of risks, Solidum Jr. added.

“The country is highly exposed to natural hazards and climate change. We need to address their potential impacts by achieving resilience through reducing the risks or impacts,” he said.

The Phivolcs chief also further added that the key to being resilient is to understand the hazards and risks of a looming disaster, where the agency has developed tools to to address such.

“The key here is to be able to understand the hazards and the risks. There are tools that Phivolcs has developed,” he said, citing speaking of the GeoRiskPhilippines project of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

GeoRiskPhilippines, a geographic information system (GIS), integrates various data such as exposures and hazard maps, and presents the data through visual assessments in the form of charts, graphs, and maps. This will help the public and businesses to better understand and prepare for natural hazards such as earthquakes.

Roland Gerard Veloso Jr., BPI Corporate Credit Products Group head, reiterated the importance for businesses to identify and anticipate risks at its onset to better identify if their investments are free from hazards such as fault lines, or safe from other possible disasters such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the like.

Phivolcs also has the HazardHunter app and website, which identifies fault lines, possible areas to be affected by eruptions, tsunamis, as well as other hazards.

Businesses in region 7 have already been tested in hazards, since as recent as 2013, the provinces of Bohol and Cebu has been ravaged by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that reached a maximum Intensity of VII, damaging most of Bohol’s century-old churches, as well as the renowned Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, Cebu Provincial Capitol, and the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, among others.

Multiple houses and structures such as hospitals, multi-purpose gyms, and other infrastructures were badly affected by the earthquake.

The deadly earthquake also caused landslides in the towns of Aloguinsan, Argao, and Boljoon in Cebu; and the towns of Alicia, Antequera, Balilihan, Bilar, Carmen, Clarin, Corella, Cortes, Danao, Dimiao, Lila, Loboc, and Loon in Bohol.

More than 300 people died in Bohol and Cebu due to the earthquake, with damages amounting to PHP2.25 billion. (GFB)