Tsunami alert triggers panic in Philippines
Pastor Dale Morgan
Thursday November 16, 3:36 PM Reuters
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Tsunami alert triggers panic in Philippines*
MANILA (Reuters) - Hundreds of residents of coastal towns in northern
and central Philippines evacuated on Thursday despite official
assurances that there was no threat of a tsunami following a major quake
in the north Pacific.
Entire villages were abandoned as mobile telephone text messages from
people warning of 40-foot (12-metre) waves caused panic among villagers
after an estimated 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck 1,700 km (1,000
miles) northeast of Tokyo late on Wednesday.
Disaster officials had issued an alert level 2 -- meaning coastal
dwellers should be watchful -- late on Wednesday after the quake but
cancelled the advisory shortly after midnight when no large waves occurred.
Hundreds of residents remain on higher ground, afraid to go home.
"We need a better advisory system," Renato Solidum, head of the
Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told a local radio
station. "We need a clearer way of disseminating information. We don't
want people to panic."
Small tsunami waves hit Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido just
before 10 p.m. (1 p.m. British time) on Wednesday but there were no
reports of more significant waves either in Japan or Russia's sparsely
populated Kurile islands.
Disaster officials advised coastal residents in Cagayan, Isabela and
Quirino provinces in the northeastern Philippines to return home because
there was no danger of giant waves hitting their communities.
But one woman told the radio station people were still fleeing the area.
"Our neighbours are still packing and ready to go to nearby hills. There
were only two families left here and we're preparing to leave too."
People feared a repeat of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami --
Japanese for "harbour wave" -- that killed or left missing up to 232,000
people in late 2004. The Philippines was not affected by that earthquake.