The great quake

It was nine past in the evening. As usual, I was facing this monitor, looking for interesting sites to  browse before I was overtaken by drowsiness. Then suddenly the apartment was swinging like a hammock. My first impulse was to reach for the TV because it was already on the edge of a filing cabinet. If these swinging went on longer, it could fall down, that good old reliable vintage TV that has served us since the early '90s.

Then I went back to my seat but kept on with the internet. For a moment, I thought I should shut it down, but it was a source of news and communication. In FB, some friends were literally screaming their hearts out, some in prayerful supplication.  The people inside Robinson Plaza in Tacloban had panicked, causing a near stampede. Some children were lost as their mothers scampered for the exits, leaving them behind. I could just imagine the sight. Then a blackout in the entire city. Leyeco II had cut off its power.

I suppose they had reasons to get panicky. After all, the epicenter of the quake was just 160 kilometers off Borongan, East Samar. A tectonic plate in the Pacific had moved and a tsunami alert raised. All the towns in Leyte and Samar facing the Pacific Ocean were on red alert. Our scientists had not perfected their tools for predicting earthquakes and tsunamis, and so nobody was certain what would happen next. It was best to be prepared. It was evacuation time for coastal residents. I wonder how things turned out last night.

We who are on the western seaboard were pretty sure no  tsunami was large enough to cross the mountainous divide that straddle between the east and west of Leyte - if anything of that sort happened. But thank God, none of that took place. If it was a volcanic eruption in the Pacific, that would have been more dangerous.

One thing I noticed was that on panic time, people reveal themselves for what they truly are. The religious ones and believers turn to God and implore his Divine mercy, but many others didn't know what to do. Very few stayed calm to analyze things. For sure, in times like this, reason rarely prevails.