Seares: Where we were when the quake struck

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Frank Malilong, that whiz of a lawyer-columnist, asked his readers where they were shortly before noon last Monday when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Cebu and Negros.
"
Where were you?" is often asked after an earthshaking event and Feb. 6's tremor was literally and figuratively one.

Unlike in Negros Or., where at least 71 people died, in Cebu nobody was killed or injured. Yet the panic shortly after the 11:49 a.m. quake was as emotionally jarring.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

People in large numbers rushed out to streets and other open spaces. Many others sought higher ground.

We were a city in the grip of fear, which didn't happen in recent history. Our behavior bordered on mass hysteria: "emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances."

We weren't prepared for something we only saw in the movies and on CNN, which
conditioned us to a gut, not reasoned response. In the aftermath, with egos bruised, we flogged the usual people to blame.

Warning.

Oddly, the tsunami warning, intended to save lives, was the trigger. And immediacy and reach of false information, in text messages and tweets, helped in spreading panic.

Where were we at the time? We had a meeting at Bo's Cafe in I.T. Park (with USJR law dean Jon Capanas, San Carlos Seminary College dean Fr. Mon Echica, U.P. Cebu's Mayette Tabada, and CCPC's Cherry Ann Lim).

We didn't talk about how large numbers of people could be so quickly scared but we had
a front-window view of near-hysteria.

(paseares@sunstar.com.ph)