No one’s talking about it because no one dares think about it – not a question of if but when. When an earthquake of the same intensity as the ones that struck Haiti (magnitude 7) and Chile (8.8) hits our archipelago in this part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, what happens?

Worse than not knowing what to expect and when to expect it is not needing to know how to prepare for it. Are we just sitting idly by, waiting for the next quake and doing nothing else because God loves us and will spare us, since He has spared us so far this century? The same God who sent us the rains and floods of September 09, the same God who won’t let rain fall from a cloudless, white-hot sky six months later?

The only nervous voice I hear is that of the urban planner Jun Palafox. He’s more than worried, maybe he’s paranoid, but then he knows how “corruption money” is the greatest danger that we’ve allowed to be built into some very public buildings and structures (and what about infrastructures?).

A report in The New York Times describes Turkey’s feverish preparations, because Turkey knows its cities, like so many crowded cities in the world today, are vulnerable.

They’ve drawn up a master plan, now four years old, and they’re tightening their building codes. They’re taking out loans to buttress or replace worn-out buildings and outfitting teams of volunteers with radios, first-aid kits and crowbars. Even a little thing like making classroom doors open outward (to ease evacuations) goes a long way to assure the people that someone is in charge.

Of course, better than owning a master plan is the possibility that it will never be used. But do we have a master plan?