With just a few days to Christmas, tragedy struck anew down south, with a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hitting Mindanao on Sunday. The death toll as of press time is at least seven, with more feared trapped in collapsed structures.
Yet another earthquake, albeit a weaker magnitude 4.6, struck Davao del Sur Tuesday afternoon.
The temblors are believed to be related with earlier quakes taking place in October.
Not a few have, in manner most foul, attempted to link the quakes and Mindanao being the President’s home island. Alluding to President Rodrigo Duterte’s “sins,” these people spoke of retribution, or exhorted the people of Mindanao to pray and ask for forgiveness, claiming the earth now wants to swallow them.
Those who know better shot down these wild and unjust pronouncements, as they are being shot down now.
As they should. Earthquakes, seismology officials remind us, are not “an act of God meant to punish people. It’s just that there are active faults; when and where they will occur along the active faults is a toss of a coin,” said Ishmael Narag, officer-in-charge of the Seismological Observation and Earthquake Prediction Division of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
Developments in Mindanao have changed the perception that it was an island not prone to earthquakes. Scientists are still studying the phenomenon, given the multiple fault lines recently discovered. After all, when you live in a country that sits on a precarious part of the planet, anything is possible. There is no other reason for these natural occurrences, certainly not the wrath of a god.
In the meantime, as we enter another frenzied holiday season, pondering the lot of those affected by the quake will do a lot to temper our craving for material indulgences and prod us to help the victims and survivors.
This, as well as acknowledging that humanity does not distinguish whether one is “DDS,” “dilawan” or neutral—essentially Filipinos trying to make it from one day to the next hoping the government would just do its job—will do much to occasion a simple, sobering Christmas for all of us.