The Representative of the 2nd District of Sultan Kudarat and the Assistant Majority Floor Leader Rep. Bella Vanessa B. Suansing has released a statement about the recent earthquake in Mindanao and what should be done to address the concerns related to such a scenario.
On 23 February 2026, I stood on the floor of the House and warned that the coastal communities of the 2nd District of Sultan Kudarat, and every province along the Cotabato Trench, were exposed to a catastrophe we had already lived through once. I recalled the Moro Gulf earthquake and tsunami of 1976. I presented the government’s own simulation of a magnitude 8.4 earthquake on the same trench. And I asked this House to investigate how to protect our coastal communities and to fund that protection in the 2027 National Budget.
Four months later, on the first morning of the school year, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck that same trench. Children ran from their flag ceremonies. Schools in Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato were among the hardest hit in the country.
I take no comfort in having been right. No one can predict an earthquake, and I did not. What we can predict, and what we warned about, is what happens to an unprotected coast when the ground finally moves. We have the knowledge. We have the tools. We have, by the government’s own accounting, the money. What we have lacked is the decision to spend it where the danger is. I am asking my colleagues, and the national government, to make that decision now, before the next one, and not after.
