Along the driveway of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) in Quezon City, there is a small green hut with a lamp at the center that swings gently or violently depending on the earthquakeâs intensity. Phivolcs personnel call it the Shaking Table, but itâs more than a piece of furniture. The open structure is an earthquake simulator device that replicates the varied intensities of a tremor, the only one of its kind in the country. The simple device was built a decade after a devastating magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck Luzon in 1990, toppling tall buildings in Baguio City and burying hundreds of victims under mounds of rubble. The tremor was stronger than the magnitude-7.2 earthquake that struck Haiti last week, which damaged billions in property and claimed thousands of lives. In the wake of the 1990 disaster, the Philippine government developed the Phivolcs Earthquake Intensity Scale (PEIS) the following year to describe the movements during a tremor, according to Ma. Mylene Villegas, Chief Science Research Specialist of Phivolcs.