Overwhelming. We cannot yet adequately describe the damage wrought by the magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck Negros last Monday.
For a Province that is still reeling from the damage from the flood spawned by Tropical Storm Sendong last Dec. 17, our resiliency as a people is again put to the test.
As in the case of Sendong, we are again witness to the outpouring of support from generous individuals from all over the world. For the earthquake victims, however, the needs are not clothing — but food, water and, perhaps, construction materials for those who lost their homes.
Many homes withstood the earthquake but sadly, their occupants were, and continue to be, victims of misinformation.
It didn’t help any that one of two radio stations broadcast unverified information when they announced raw information that the sea level in barangay Bantayan had receded. It also didn’t help any that the Philippine Institute of Volcanology issued “Tsunami Alert Level 2” without any definition of what “level 2” meant.
The situation is worse in the City of Guihulngan, and the town of La Libertad, where scores were killed, and many more are reported missing.
The lack of any usable information has turned these places into “ghost towns” as people continue to live in fear of the unknown.
We have observed how the Provincial Disaster Risk-Reduction & Management Council has worked to respond to this tragedy. And we commend them for working hard, given their limitations. But they could, on the other hand, have done better.
An area that sorely needs improvement is in the timely dissemination of accurate information people can actually use.
The website of the Province, http://www.negor.gov.ph, its window to the rest of the world, is woefully wanting in this regard.
As of Friday, Feb. 10, its last post was made on Feb. 3 yet. This website, if updated at least three times a day, could be of great help in reassuring the people.
People need information on the damage (leave the drama to the commercial media), government response, donations received, and the science behind earthquakes and tsunamis. To do this, they need people to attend to the information needs of the public on a full-time basis. Time is of the essence to react or counter any wrong assumptions on the part of the public.
The last thing we need is a stampede caused by fear of a tsunami when probably all they might have heard was a mother looking for her daughter, shouting amid all the confusion, “Chona Mae! Chona Mae!”
