I am totally biased. I think that Tagaytay and the surrounding areas are an abomination against man and nature.
I can remember 25 years ago when a trip to the area was an excursion, an adventure. You went to Tagaytay for the fresh air, cool breeze, and a chance for the majestic view of Taal Lake and the volcano.
You could pull over on the Tagaytay-Nasugbu Highway (just a road) and take pictures. Going the other direction you could go to Picnic Grove and People’s Park. Now both are more like visiting the Pasay Rotonda bus terminal. I actually hiked all the way (well, almost all the way) up the steep road to the Palace in the Sky.
And if I knew then what I know now, I would have sold everything and bought all the land I could along the main road and made millions. We went to Tagaytay to escape the city. But that was not good enough. We had to bring the city to Tagaytay. Now you can view the volcano from McDonald’s.
Let’s be realistic. This eruption put all those condo units constructed in the past decade in interesting perspective. If Taal decides to do a “Pinatubo,” there are going to be many billions of pesos of condos—figuratively if not literally—falling down the hill to Silang.
Depending on which volcanologist you read, Taal Volcano is the “second” most active volcano in the Philippines. We have heard many times about the 1911 eruption, but check the recent activity.
Taal went off from September 28 to 30, 1965, blanketing 60 square kilometers and killed about 200 people. “The clouds that formed during the explosive eruption rose to heights of 15 kilometers to 20 km and deposited fine ash as far as 80 km west of the vent.” An eruption happened on September 3, 1976, and this explosive activity persisted for 50 days.
While correctly filed under “No Big Deal,” Taal rumbled and did other volcano things in 1991, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. And the condo construction continued.
I have a problem with anyone who says, “But the government did not tell me.” I check under the seat to make sure the life vest is there when I fly. I have a hard time when somebody gets onboard a leaky bangka obviously overcrowded without life vests and goes to sea in stormy weather. Then when the wave hits, the fan expects taxpayer funded emergency agencies to save them and complains that they were not warned about the risks.
You might mention the Marikina Valley Fault System that runs 146 km from Marikina to Canlubang, Laguna. That is a false equivalency. A large earthquake on that fault will have devastating effects on all of the National Capital Region. Unless Taal acts up like Pinatubo, the damage to Metro Manila will be potentially major, but not a catastrophe.
However, read this contemporary account—The Eruption of Taal Volcano, January 30, 1911—by Rev. Miguel Saderra Masó, S.J. of the Manila Observatory and the Weather Bureau. “The area of destruction consists of a central portion and an outer zone. Within the former the devastation was complete.” The central portion measured 20 kilometers north to south and 12 km east to west, which is almost the same as what we are seeing now.
“The effects are better described as ‘annulations’ than ‘destruction.’” There is no mention of significant damage in the “outer zone.”
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