Before, during and after

The four hazards that empty Philippine streets, each one written the way the question gets asked: what to do before it, what to do while it is happening, and what to do once it has passed.

Each step on these pages comes from PAGASA, PHIVOLCS, UNICEF Philippines or a city disaster office, is printed here in plain English, and links back to the document it was taken from. Where a source is a city guide rather than a national one, the page says so.

Landslides share the flood guide, because the same days of rain produce both. What a landslide actually is, and the five kinds of movement PHIVOLCS names, has a page of its own.

After an earthquake a bulletin gives one magnitude and a list of intensities, which are two different measurements and are read as one number more often than not. What each of the ten PHIVOLCS intensity levels describes is set out on its own page, in the agency's words.

The instruction for the shaking itself is three words, duck, cover and hold, and PHIVOLCS names the situations where it is not what to do: outside, near the shore, and in a moving vehicle.