Okay,
so I did read up on material given to us before we went to the
Philippines..honest, I did read it!
But I shall post some general items of interest from my recent reading
over the snow days, which kept me home Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
In
1751 Father Juan J. Delgado, a Jesuit historian, nicknamed the Philippines “The
Pearl of the Orient”. Ship trade then
conveyed such items as silk, porcelain, spices, and pearls from the East to the
West.
The
Philippines is blessed with abundant natural resources, but also “cursed” with a
sometimes dangerous and unpredictable environment. I read that the Philippines lies in a zone
of earth fractures around the Pacific Ocean prone to earthquakes. It is an archipelago that forms a link in a
volcanic belt known as the Pacific “ring of fire.’
I further read that the Philippines
experiences one 7.75 or higher tertonic earthquake every 10 years; 7 of 7 to 7.4 magnitude every 10 years; and
five of 6 to 6.-9 magnitude yearly. That was a surprising fact to me. And as I perhaps mentioned in an
earlier blog, Bohol Island still is experiencing aftershocks in the magnitude of 3 to
3.5 from the earthquake that caused major destruction there in November. There are also 21 active volcanoes
spread across the Philippine archipelago.
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