Editorial: Search for ‘tsunami shouter’

Friday, February 10, 2012

THE police have started questioning people believed to have sparked the tsunami panic that swept parts of Cebu City a few hours after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit Negros Oriental last Monday. But radio block timer Danilo Cogtas and Ermita barangay councilor Domingo Ando Jr. denied they were the culprits.

Cebu City Police Office intelligence chief Romeo Santander was quoted as saying that they may file a case against the two once the testimonies of witnesses have been gathered. It is doubtful, however, if the police can make the charges stick.

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It is difficult, for example, to be definite of a suspect’s role in sparking the panic wave. Ideally, the first person who shouted “tsunami!” should be the one targeted, not those who echoed that shout with honest intention to warn others of the danger. That is what makes pinning, say, Cogtas and Ando tricky.

In the end, however, arresting those who started the tsunami scare may not mean anything if the purpose is to prevent a repeat of what happened last Monday. It is a rather simplistic solution to a complicated problem.

One should note, for example, that the wave of panic was not limited to Cebu City, which means that the scare was not only a matter of a person or persons going around shouting the magic word (tsunami). Even without witnesses claiming that a “tsunami shouter” existed, people in other areas still panicked.

Authorities should therefore zero in not on a person or persons but on an idea, or more properly, fear of the unknown, which the word “tsunami” was to many people. The basic idea was that a tsunami is caused by an earthquake, so when the temblor struck Monday, a tsunami scare formed.

Would the situation have been different had people been informed well of when tsunamis occur? If they were told, for example, that tsunamis as big as those that swept parts of Japan last year occur only rarely, would they still have been jumpy?

Of course, the lack of a guideline on what to do when a tsunami alert is raised played a part in that panic wave. Chaos, instead of an orderly retreat to higher grounds, erupted. Worse, authorities lost control of the situation.

Instead of looking for the “tsunami shouter,” it would be best for government, therefore, to objectively assess what happened last Monday and use the lessons culled from it to prevent another occurrence of a panic situation.