The earth moved! My chair rocked! Where were you when the earthquake hit? For days, no one could talk about anything else.
Unknown to the public, the series of medium-size earthquakes that shook Batangas and neighboring provinces in April, and damaged a number of structures including the centuries-old churches of Batangas City and Taal, also affected the Unesco World Heritage Church of San Agustin in Intramuros, Manila.
His fascination with earthquakes started during his teenage years, and may have been spurred by the challenging question that his professor in structural engineering had once asked: “Can you design buildings for earthquakes?”
The minimum objective, according to quake engineer Dr. Benny Pacheco, is to prevent damage to, or the collapse of, brittle structures during an earthquake and its aftershocks.
Bohol has been hit by back-to-back major natural disasters, the kind the province in Central Visayas has not seen in recent memory.
