I usually sleep early because I wake up early too, but on that particular night I woke up before midnight after my son texted me that he and his mother would pass by the house of his uncle to eat, as his child was celebrating her birthday. I checked the table and found some “bring-house” food on it. A few moments later, the house shook. My son, who was on the second floor, immediately got down and guided me and his mother outside, where some of our neighbors had gathered.
It wasn’t our first experience with a tremor, though. A little more than a decade ago, an earthquake hit us while I and my two sons were in the town oval. We were jogging when the racetrack shook gently and the windows of nearby structures made noises. I got rattled, of course, and for seconds I didn’t know what to do. It was only after the shaking that I guided my sons home to check on my wife and the house. Then I tried contacting my relatives in the city. They were safe, but the full extent of the damage only came to be known after both traditional and social media reported on the quake. Badly hit were most of the old churches around the province. The epicenter of the quake was in the nearby province of Bohol.
This time around, the epicenter was in northern Cebu. Badly hit was the city of Bogo. While the place did have a small area with some structures, the areas that were hit were largely rural ones. And the death toll had reached more than 60 people, which is sad. Relief operations are still ongoing and have reached some snags, partly because the roads going there are not prepared for the kind of increase in traffic volume. There is also a need to improve the system in the distribution of assistance from the private sector and government down to the victims.
But reaction tragedies like this need time before these can be placed in order. One problem is politics. At the national level we have the competing political interests of President Bongbong Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte. This has affected the Capitol, where Gov. Pam Baricuatro now reigns over the previous occupant of the position, Gwendolyn Garcia. Baricuatro is with the PDP-Laban of the Dutertes, while Garcia was with Marcos when Baricuatro defeated her. But in tragedies, politics should be the least of the incumbent government officials’s concerns.
The other problem is the weather. As I am writing this, the sky has gotten overcast and the surrounding have grown darker. We had to take out the almost dry clothes from the clothesline so rain wouldn’t wet them. Imagine how disruptive this setup would be in the distribution of relief goods. Even now, the aftershocks have made volunteers wary of their safety.
With the advances in technology, the question now is whether or not it would be good to post the help given by individuals to the victims. With the highly democratized distribution of information, anybody can post using the various social media platforms whatever info he or she wants to give the public. What I hate most is when politically motivated creators peddle fake news, using tragedy to advance political goals.