While having lunch today, I felt a strong earthquake. Our house – which stands on wooden stilts – shook about and I heard this continuous low booming sound.
Our home in Baclayon
According to reports, the earthquake transpired 2012 February 06 03:49:16 UTC – that’s at 11:49AM here in the Philippines. At Magnitude 6.7, it’s quite strong, with the epicentre in the Cebu-Negros area, some 75 or so kilometers away from where we live.
I went out to check the fish pond near the house just to make sure that what I was feeling was indeed an earthquake. There I saw the water swooshing about and flowing out of the pond.
Earlier, our chickens were making strange noises and several of them kept wanting to go inside the house. Perhaps they knew that there was something about with the earth.
I hope that no one was hurt.
The earth is an amazing living object.
Hope there’s no more – if only we can prepare… Here in Q.C. its been 12 years since the last strong one.
Your house looks so nice Fats, and seems sturdy enough for an earthquake… are you safe from landslides or tsunami?
I really hope there’s no more! The aftershocks were quite strong too.
Supposedly, a wood house is good, flexible to withstand earthquakes. Our house just sways about and the wood bends and flexes – I hope we’re more safe than it feels! We’re 500 meters from the sea and quite elevated so I think we’re safe from tsunami. And thank goodness, Bohol still has fairly good forest cover so landslides aren’t so common here – I think it happens only along roads where the sides of mountains have been cut away to accommodate the infrastructure. I think the less development there is (for example less concreting, less quarrying and less cutting of trees), then the safer we are in our environment.
I hope there are no more earthquakes for this year… kaka start pa lang ng taon.. earthquake agad.. haayz…
I like your house ! I imagine it must be very relaxed to live there…
Salamat, Bheng! I’ve been dreaming of earthquakes ever since … But in all my dreams, I wasn’t afraid at all. Maybe I’m trying to remove the anxiety from the experience … seems to be working!