MANILA, 4 December 2006 — Text messages warning of a coming tsunami forced residents in coastal areas of a city badly hit by Typhoon Reming (Durian) to flee yesterday, television and radio reports said.
Among the villages that was emptied of residents at noon yesterday was barangay Rawis in Legazpi City, one of those that took a beating from the supertyphoon on Thursday.
“It was a cruel joke and we are trying to pinpoint who was responsible,” said Chief Superintendent Boco, the regional police director for the eastern region of Bicol.
ABS-CBN television said the tsunami rumor, spread via the ubiquitous cellular phones, spread like a storm and people raced inland in all types of vehicles, including carabao carts.
GMA Network’s radio station DZBB, reporting from Legazpi, said there could have been injuries as people were trampled in the mad rush that was quelled only after police and soldiers deployed to aid relief and rescue efforts moved in to calm down the crowd.
A still sobbing woman interviewed by the station said they were washing in a river “when someone said a tsunami would hit us. Everyone just panicked.”
Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said there could not have been a tsunami because no earthquake had been recorded nearby.
A tsunami is a Japanese term for gigantic waves caused usually by a strong earthquake. The biggest and deadliest tsunami in recent times occurred in December of 2004 in the Indian Ocean, killing hundreds of thousands of people in coastal areas mostly in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.
The coastal areas of Albay province and other provinces in the eastern coasts of the Philippines are considered vulnerable to tsunamis from the Pacific Ocean. (With input from Inquirer News Service)
