EDITORIAL - Time to drop the tsunami subject

If the authorities are looking for those who started the tsunami panic last Monday, they got the wrong people in that radio blocktimer and barangay councilman they are now linking to the incident.

In a city of roughly one million, most of whom were already agitated by the 6.9 magnitude earthquake and put on notice by the Phivolcs tsunami alert level 2 warning, there is no proving who really started the panic with absolute certainty.

Perhaps the blocktimer and the councilman helped the panic along by their actions. But having started it? Nah! Truth to tell, it could have been anyone of the city’s million residents. It could have been anyone outside Cebu, for that matter.

What is more plausible is that the panic did not start from someone shouting tsunami but from a single texter claiming one was coming. One text can become a million in just a matter of minutes.

The authorities, if they really want to get to the bottom of this madness, can actually pinpoint the original text message. But it will require sifting through millions of text messages that are generated each day in this texting capital of the universe.

And that will require not just time but patience. Besides, judging by the fragile focus and short attention span with which the authorities are notorious for, the next earthquake will no sooner hit than actually finding who the culprit is.

The best thing to do, therefore, is shut up, drop the subject, and charge everything to experience, perhaps even laugh about it. The panic was already bad enough as it was without us having to go through another pain of embarking on a folly that will get us no real answers.

The blocktimer and the councilman may have helped the panic, but hey, didn’t you yourself also contributed to the hysteria by also running without thinking? Did you not also freely tell anyone who asked what the fuss was about that a tsunami was coming.

Anyone who ran, by the mere act of running, contributed to the creation of a horrifying scene. Anyone who told another that a tsunami was coming, even if qualified with “kuno” is liable for passing on unverified information. So let us just drop it and laugh at ourselves, okay?