Published on page A13 of the December 29, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A TELLTALE sign of an oncoming tsunami, experts say, is the seawater receding and exposing the ocean floor. This phenomenon is so unusual that it will usually draw townsfolk to the beach front, and a number might even venture farther out to "harvest" the fish and other marine life stranded on the sandy bottom. Seconds or minutes later, a "wall of water" will come rushing back in, catching the people off-guard. And that is why, authorities on disasters claim, tsunamis kill and maim so many people.
The oncoming waves are also so high and powerful that they will knock down any structures in its path, and flood areas that lie kilometers inland. Amateur video footage of the destruction wrought in Phuket, Thailand, in India and Sri Lanka, showed the floodwaters knocking down huts and buildings, sweeping away cars and buses and carrying off hapless folks.
By far the most chilling news for Filipinos, in the aftermath of what has to be one of the world's biggest natural disasters, is that the Philippines is "prone to tsunamis," as the headline of a front-page story said. In fact, said the report, two temblors, mild and unrelated to the earthquake just off the coast of Sumatra, hit the country just before dawn Sunday. The archipelago is located in the earthquake belt, we are told, and our long coastline (one of the longest in the world) makes us vulnerable to any killer waves created by shifting tectonic plates.
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