EDITORIAL - Quakes are terrible, panic makes them worse

South of Metro Manila, Cebu is tops in many ways -- it is the hub of economic activity, the seat of education, the center of culture and arts, the vanguard of technology. At the risk of sounding boastful, Cebu and the Cebuanos seem to be a cut above the rest. Then came February 6, 2012.

On that day, a big quake centered in Negros also rocked Cebu. In was an inappropriate time (if ever there should even be one) for a big quake, with memorable scenes of Japan still fresh in everyone's minds. With a tsunami alert prominently displayed on TV, somebody shouted and the Queen City collapsed.

Looking back, the obvious questions remain unanswered, even to this day. How could an entire city that was tops in almost everything fall apart over a no-brainer? Between Negros and Cebu is Tañon Strait. No tsunami can develop in such a narrow waterway. Big waves maybe, but not a tsunami in the sense that we recall Japan.

But even granting, for the sake of argument, that a tsunami did develop, from where the quake struck in Negros, a tsunami would first have to travel south, make a U-turn at the tip of Cebu in Santander, then make its way up north toward Cebu City. That is asking too much of a tsunami.

The public life of that story was very brief. The media did not give it as much attention as it would normally on far less important stories. Maybe the element of embarrassment had something to do with its short shelf life. And Cebuanos thought it just might as well be that the sordid tale died quickly.

And then came October 15, 2013. An even bigger quake rocked Bohol and Cebu. Bohol bore the brunt of the devastation. But something psychological left a deeper scar among Cebuanos -- the Santo Niño belfry collapsed. The loss of such an iconic structure shook more than just the collective knees of Cebuanos.

A series of aftershocks so strong they could have been major quakes in themselves did not help. They made the Cebuanos even more vulnerable. In a state where they even imagined some shaking where there was none, the time was ripe for one more prank.

This time, the prank was not shouted from a roving bike but passed around by text and social media. It warned of a coming magnitude 8.0 earthquake to be set off by a fault in Marikina. First, quakes can't be predicted. Second, Marikina is farther from Cebu than Bohol is. A quake there should be weaker than Bohol's.

Still Cebuanos panicked, again. And while the panic was not as overwhelming as the tsunami scare of last year, it nevertheless put to question the credulity of Cebuanos. Quakes are fearsome. Even kings tremble when the ground shakes. Fear spared no Cebuano since the quakes. That doesn't mean common sense must die too.