Even PNoy questioned the Phivolcs

The panic that ensued after that tsunami scare has sent our government officials calling for a series of meetings in order to prevent a repeat of last Monday’s embarrassing incident. We can only say… “Why only now?” As we wrote already, the Indonesian tsunami that destroyed Aceh happened on Dec. 26, 2004, while the most recent was the Great Japan earthquake that struck northeastern Japan last March 11, 2011. So why only now are our government officials finally getting their acts together?

 This is what pundits say “This is akin to closing the barn door after the cows have been stolen.” According to The FREEMAN editorial yesterday, the Philippine Seismology and Volcanology (Phivolcs-7) insists that they did not make a mistake in issuing a tsunami alert. Of course they will never admit their mistakes. I dare say that they were mistaken because a tsunami alert should have been issued immediately after our earthquake monitors have registered an earthquake, not two hours later!

 Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III who went to Negros Oriental last Wednesday called for an investigation as to who spread the text scares in the Visayas because he wants these people charged in court. He also called on Phivolcs to spread the correct information. Now it’s not just me questioning the Phivolcs but the President, as well. I myself got the information about the level 2 tsunami alert from the communiqué sent by Malacañang at exactly 2:30PM or more than 2 hours and 40 minutes after the earthquake struck.

 But since PNoy will never have his Palace Rasputins investigated, we can only hope that he will investigate Phivolcs. They even admitted that they didn’t know that there was a fault line between Cebu and Negros. What then caused Cebu to separate from Negros? Was it not an earthquake eons ago when the earth’s crust moved from many directions?

 The least that PNoy should do is to educate his Palace Rasputins on the relation between earthquakes and tsunamis. If only these people had time to watch Discovery Channel or National Geographic, they will have an idea that earthquakes that happen under the sea can produce the most destructive tsunamis.

 We in Cebu have always known that if ever we get a tsunami alert from the Pacific Ocean, we are protected by the islands of Samar, Leyte or Bohol. We’ve always known this as fact… but unfortunately, a great number of Cebuanos are ignorant about this simply because many of them saw the TV footages of the destruction that the tsunami did in Indonesia and Japan.

 Now, Assistant Regional Director Welino Gubuan of the Office of the Civil Defense Central Visayas wants to revive an old system to disseminate information during disasters dubbed “Emergency Broadcast System.” This should trigger the question… why didn’t they ever think of that in the first place? Perhaps it is because we’ve always been bombarded with that mentality that we are a 3rd world country.

 I was with then Mayor Tomas Osmeña in Japan in the mid 90s where one of the facilities we visited was a fire station. They have a huge wall depicting the level of alerts and number one was a nuclear explosion followed by a tsunami, followed by earthquakes then flooding and fire. They already designated evacuation centers, while traffic enforcers would clear roads where fire trucks will pass to and from the fire station.

 What we should do is come up with alert levels that are not confusing to our people. Until now, people think that a tsunami alert level 2 means that the tsunami is already here… just like typhoon signal 2 means that we’re already being hit by a typhoon. At this point, we can only hope that the PNoy student government will finally get its acts together.

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 Here’s an email from a reader, Mark Anthony Tan. I had to cut it since it was quite long.

 “Hello Mr. Avila, I read your article in The FREEMAN today, “Phivolcs issued its tsunami alert too late,” and I find it really good. What interests me to write (which I am not good at) was about the question you made, “Where did that information come from?”

 We encountered this man who was driving a motorbike and was yelling that water is already in the Colon area. The man’s face was pale, frightened and was really serious about what he was yelling. Another friend of mine had the chance to hear about this man in the motorbike interrupted that while he was somewhere near Bag-ong dan, he also noticed the same man shouting at people and telling them that water is already rising and its fast approaching.

 I heard barangay tanods and neighbors talking about what happened and they were really pissed with the man in the motorbike and so I asked them about the man’s description. The man was on a Yamaha Mio. Why was this man misguiding people? Why did he do that?”

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