ellen tordesillas Posts

This article by Doug Copp, rescue chief and disaster manager of the American Rescue International, is again going the rounds of the internet following the earthquake in China that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people.

Copp says “when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the ‘triangle of life’. The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the ‘triangles’ you see formed. They
are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a
collapsed building.”

Gloria is in Panglao, Bohol today, one of the provinces that she posted an unbelievable win in the 2004 elections. She has announced building an international airport there. Read this piece on the folly of that project.

By Ernesto M. Pernia
Philippine Daily Inquirer

International airports are a humdrum topic until one realizes that we have too many of them, yet we do not have enough food, power, water and other basic needs. The subject comes to mind because another international airport is to break ground this month in Panglao Island, Bohol. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself is scheduled to preside over the ceremony.

The project was first conceptualized more than 20 years back when hardly anyone even dreamed that the island would become a world-renowned tourist attraction. With the typical on-again, off-again manner of government planning, not too many people paid attention to the project. Of late, however, it’s been rushed supposedly so that it can be completed in two years, before the end of the President’s and the provincial governor’s term in 2010.