Causes Of Earthquakes In The Philippines

Earthquake is one of the most devastating catastrophic phenomena, people have been fearing this because it produces waves which create vibrations that would then result to cracks, fissures and apertures and would lead to possible loss of life or casualties. An earthquake is inevitable and unpredictable; this is a common problem of countries especially those that are part of the Pacific ring of fire.

Located in the basin of the Pacific ocean exists an area called "The Pacific Ring of Fire", a place where a lot of earthquake and volcanic activities occur. Unfortunately, the Philippines is geographically part of it which makes it susceptible to different natural calamities, particularly in earthquake and volcanic activities. Countries that are near or part of the Pacific ring of fire, which are shown on appendix A, are vulnerable to seismic motion and volcanic activities. Since the Philippines is one of those countries, this have resulted to different fault lines which are present in the country; two of the famous fault lines are the East and West Valley fault lines, which span from Angat, Bulacan, down to Carmona, Cavite and Calamba, Laguna as seen in appendix B. Areas near these two fault lines are considered dangerous because according to PHIVOLCS, these fault lines move every 400 to 600 years and the last movement that was recorded in history was in 1658, which is 357 years ago. This indicates that any time an earthquake can happen and what is frightening is that