MMDA to hold surprise quake drill anytime this month

This year’s Metro Manila Shake Drill will come as a surprise as the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) decided not to announce the exact date to make it “more realistic.”

“No one can predict when an earthquake will happen. We must be prepared at all times so we want the shake drill unannounced,” MMDA General Manager Jojo Garcia said in a statement on Tuesday.

Now on its fourth year, the drill will be held starting at 3 p.m. any time during the third week of July.

It aims to prepare the public for the “The Big One,” a 7.2-magnitude earthquake to be generated by the movement of the West Valley Fault as predicted by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

Telecommunication network firms will announce the start of the drill through text messages, said Michael Salalima, head of the Metro Manila Shake Drill secretariat. Companies, churches, schools and other public and private institutions were also urged to come up with their own way of alerting their staff during the exercise. —Dexter Cabalza, Roselie Mari Villaflor and Kristel Limpot