Past midnight the other day the ground started shaking again, as if to remind the people of Cebu that the aftershocks aren’t over yet.
Many immediately took to social media to tell others they were safe, to check on loved ones, and also to give their five cents’ worth about what’s shaking.
Considering how some comments on social media about the quakes are misinformed or even downright silly, it’s high time people should get more educated when it comes to earthquakes, which are purely natural phenomena.
Quakes aren’t caused by mythical creatures. Sure, this was the belief during the times of superstition and the ages before science was made widely available to the masses. The belief was that quakes were caused by giant creatures within the earth. Now we know they are caused by tectonic or volcanic activity.
Quakes aren’t caused by divine wrath against a few greedy individuals. While we dare not say that we know what the almighty is thinking, if he really wanted some specific people dead they would now all be buried. And why target the innocent or those who haven’t offended him?
Besides, and we say this without necessarily being judgmental, if we have to take faults into account we can say more people or nations around the world deserve divine punishment more than we do.
Quakes aren’t predictable. Some netizens have taken it upon themselves to point the finger at PHIVOLCS for not being able to predict quakes ahead of time and warn people. That’s not how quakes work. At our present technological level, even the most advanced nations can never really tell when pressure building up in fault lines is suddenly released.
Of course, this task of educating people about quakes falls to our government agencies and learning institutions, which are actually doing a good job of disseminating information about what is going on under our feet. It’s too bad some of us insist on holding on to misconceptions.
It would be good to understand the whats and the whys of what is going on; we cannot afford to misunderstand what causes quakes considering that more of them may still be to come.