Earthquake drill is not sufficient
CONSIDERING the number of school buildings located in Baguio City, the safety of the occupants is paramount. School buildings were built for various purposes like, administrative, laboratory or purely for classroom purposes.
When calamities strike, be it man made or natural like typhoons and earthquakes, preparation is a key. Probably, it is the reason why the SDRRMC or the School Disaster Risk Reduction Management Committee were always being organized yearly. Hence the conduct of drill is part of school activities.
However Earthquake drills are not sufficient. There is a need to study the probable effects of natural disaster like earthquake to minimize damages. An integral part of preparation is a well-informed person of the probable scenario that may happened which might be close to accuracy.
This is referred to in science as the Building Damage Prediction models. For a Science learner this can be called as a simple hypothesis subject to test when the real Earthquake happens.
In a case study by Eslava et al.(2017) of the University of the Philippines entitled “A GIS- Based Earthquake Damage Prediction in Different Earthquake Models”, three study processes were cited. The first process involves Estimation of the probable intensity and magnitude of the Earthquake close to the building and surrounding area (Cinicioglu et al. 2007).
The second process is to evaluate the damage ratio of the intensity and magnitude to the building structure (Tingatinga et al. 2007) and the third step is the calculation of the damage distribution based on the ratio and the inventory of existing structures in the area.
Earthquake damage prediction using the Geographic Information System were proposed by several authors like (Karimzadeh et al. 2014). Data relating to the geological structure where school buildings are built were used in the system.
These includes the layer of soil and sediments, the type of rocks beneath the buildings, existence of groundwater and the likes. Data of previous earthquakes are also used as a bases to calculate the probable earthquake scenario.
I think there is a need for this three processes to be studied by SDRRMC participants especially coordinators as an added information to help in disaster risk reduction processes.