When It Trembles Beneath You

When the ground trembles beneath your feet, one thing is certain: there is an earthquake!

Yesterday, February 6, 2012, was a Monday like any other. It was around noon. The clock had probably just struck 12. I was reclining on the sofa near our kitchen, while my older brother was washing something at the sink nearby. Our youngest was in his room, cleaning up a few more scraps. The atmosphere was pretty ordinary. None of the dogs and none of the chickens were behaving oddly; no bloodcurdling howls and no mysterious crowing. The birds were chirping the usual way and, perhaps because I was busy acting like a sloth to even take heed, not a single note seemed out of place. The plants at and below the porch were as stoic as ever. There was no cause for suspicion because there was absolutely no clue from the environment.

Then a sound came. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Rrrrrrrrrrrrr!

To my untrained ears, it sounded like a helicopter or an airplane flying just a few meters above our house. I sat up and felt the sofa shaking under my touch. Rrrrrrrrrrr! Rrrrrrrrrrr! My head began to swirl. I felt slightly dizzy. Before I could shout out my own realization, my younger brother, who was upstairs and could feel the trembling more palpably, beat me to it: "Linog! Linog!" My older brother realized lethargically. Yet when he did, wide-eyed and hands soaked with water, he pushed me out of the house, half-running.

"Get out! Get out!" he said. "We're going to be crushed if we don't get out!"

I did as he commanded and let him push me out. The idea that our house was going to crumble and crush us - God forbid - never sank into my system, so I mentally laughed to myself. According to my cynical self, the whole thing, the trembling ground and the running, was as preposterous as can be. I know my younger brother also did not entertain the idea. He was already at the gate when the trembling stopped. There was a hesitant look on his face as if running out of the house for safety purposes was equally preposterous to him. I could not help but think that if it was an earthquake with a magnitude of around 7.5 or above, he'd probably be a goner - God forbid again. Thank heavens it was just a short-lived aftershock.

At the epicenter, which was located between the islands of Negros and Cebu, the earthquake's magnitude peaked to 6.9. A blind fault underneath the sea bordering the two islands caused one of the country's biggest earthly tremors to date. The bulk of the impact was received by the struggling towns of Tayasan, Guihulngan and La Libertad in Negros Oriental. Dumaguete City, the province's capital, was also far from being unscathed. Roads had epic cracks (as if molten lava was going to spurt right out of them), electric posts collapsed, buildings cracked like eggs, cars parked on soft earth literally sank, people began to panic - it was utter pandemonium.

The media went wild flashing scenes of crying school children, distressed looking adults, streets buzzing with hysterical people, cracking roads and buildings, ruined infrastructures and public officials asking citizens to calm down. PHIVOLCS, during an interview with the giant networks, announced that they were already aware of this blind fault but its lack of activity led them to focus monitoring on other faults instead. It seems to me that vulcanologists exist not to predict the movements of tectonic plates so as to warn people of impending earthquakes, but rather to wait for quakes and aftershocks to happen so they can measure corresponding magnitudes and intensities. The data will then be filed not for future preemptive plans but for theoretical research purposes. So much for technology.

I have a lot of relatives in Negros. My father hails from one of the sleepy towns there and most of his siblings as well as his parents have not moved from the place ever since. When the earthquake shook the little town of Basay, my aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins all went on a caravan and sought an elevated place. That wasn't the first horrendous shaking they encountered but it must have been enough to inflict trauma. They bombarded my dad with text messages, reporting to him their own personal experience of the quake. Of course, the cynic in me thinks texting is useless as it won't stop the tectonic plates from bumping into each other. But if communicating with my dad did calm their nerves then so be it. No doubt it was terrifying to be in a place where you could feel the tremors in as horrible a fashion as possible, maybe seven times more horrible than what my brothers and I experienced. At least they had warning from the environment. One of my aunts reported that a day or so before the quake, hordes of whales and whale sharks were spotted off the beaches of Basay. They must have tried to get away from the tremors. Lucky them. Our dogs and chickens never bothered.

When the earth trembles beneath you, it also sends aftershocks to your psyche. I was not trembling and scared like I always would after a nightmare. My mind, however, mulled over a bunch of dark possibilities: 

• It's one of the signs of times, so there's definitely more to come in preparation for the world's end (it was the seventh earthquake within 14 days).
• If the quake worsened and we were all to die then - God forbid so much - at least we were all together.
• How many and who died?
• How did they die? Were they crushed, drowned or ran over?
• There's a tsunami underway that would possibly transform Cebu into a "Waterworld."

As if my thoughts were not morbid enough, that afternoon, the media played along with a nasty rumor and was telling everyone over the airwaves that the Colon and Taboan areas were filled with seawater, which was allegedly rising up to 7 feet. I took the bait and warned everyone via text. Little did I know there was hardly any truth to it. Too early for April's fool yet I was still tricked. Just goes to show how media suck these days.

That's not the last you heard about the quake (a pity it doesn't have a name like the typhoons that ravaged this country since time immemorial). There were two more aftershocks early that evening. As I was in my room preoccupied with the internet, I felt it right away. I proudly shouted "Linog! Linog!" - this time beating my younger brother to it. Then we, along with my mother and older brother, hurriedly went down from the second floor and out of the house until the shaking ebbed. 

When it trembles beneath you, you see a different side to your self. I realized I was trying too hard to panic. It was one of those adventures where, no matter how devastating its actual impact, being remote from the location of carnage makes you flippant and nonchalant about the danger hovering in the air. I must admit: getting caught up in something dangerous and unpredictable thrills me to some extent. However, between having a serial killer as your next-door neighbor on one hand and experiencing a first-class earthquake on the other, the former would have scared me to death much more than the latter. 

I want to panic next time. I want to panic and laugh at how much I panicked when I'm alone or with friends. If I still don't, please teach me how. (: